v N * 



> c- V 

*>. .v. 



V ' 






\> ^ 










,0 0, 



A- ./> 




,0o 



xV^ 







X°°- 



^ ^ 



:< 







,0' , s tnJ'* 



'> 



^ "+. 




: .%* -v 




.A 



•\ 



















HB, 










s* ^ 











































GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 

After the portrait l>y Kramer 



m? 



9 




sgggSS^ 



SELECTIONS FROM 
BYRON 



The Prisoner of Chillon, Mazeppa 
and Other Poems 




® 



fS^ 3 ^ 



Edited 
With Introduction and Notes 

BY 

SAMUEL MARION TUCKER 

Professor of English Literature, Florida State 
College por Women 




GINN & COMPANY 

BOSTON NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 




tf 



] LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Goote Received 

AUG 27 190? 

Copynsrht Entry 

CLASS fit 'aXc 
COPY B. 



., nlo. 






£ 



> 



Copyright, 1907 
By SAMUEL MARION TUCKER 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



77-8 



GINN & COMPANY • PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



TO 

WILLIAM PETERFIELD TRENT 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS INSCRIBED 

IN GRATITUDE AND ESTEEM 



PREFACE 



The primary purpose of this book is to give the young 
Wader some insight into Byron's genius by presenting for 
tudy and for reading those of his poems which should make 
he most immediate appeal. For such a purpose much of 
Byron's poetry is admirably fitted, since, as a whole, it is not 
ibstruse in its subject-matter, is lucid in its expression, and, 
ibove all, is spirited and energetic. 

To teach the essential spirit of literature, not grammar, 
philology, or rhetoric, surely should be our aim when we pre- 
sent poetry to our classes. Even history, biography, mythology, 
)r anything else, except as these are absolutely essential to a 
uroper appreciation of the poem, are not really within our 
province. Teachers of literature have something to do that 
sannot be done by teachers of other subjects ; and we have 
10 business to poach upon the preserves of our colleagues. A 
;reat poem, rightly presented, is sure not only to give aes- 
hetic pleasure, but to train the mind and the heart as well. 
n this connection it may not be amiss for one of his old 
■tudents to acknowledge the help he has received from three 
assays by Professor W. P. Trent, — " Teaching the Spirit of 
literature," in The Authority of Criticism, and " The Aims 
ind Methods of Literary Study" and "Teaching Literature," 
n Greatness in Literature. 

The length of the Introduction to this book, especially of 
he biographical part, can perhaps be justified by Byron's 
mportance as a historic figure and by the intimate relations 



viii SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

subsisting between his life and his works. The criticism claims 
to be neither technical nor subtle, but attempts to deal rather 
in broad generalizations which may appeal to the young 
reader and yet not mislead him. In the introduction, the 
notes, and the critical comments I have tried to be accurate 
in matters of fact, and still to present both facts and opinions 
in a style that might awaken interest — without which all liter 
ary study is of course soulless and ineffective. 

In the choice of selections for this volume The Prisonev 
of Chillon and Mazeppa, since they are among the college 
entrance requirements, were naturally the first consideration.! 
Other poems, in whole or in part, have been included, either 
for study or for reading, that the book may perhaps be found 
useful in college classes also. Lack of space, the purpose o:f 
the volume, and, in some cases, objectionable matter in the 
poems themselves have excluded from this collection th« 
dramas, the longer narrative poems, and the satires; buj 
Childe Harold and Don Juan very well lend themselves t( 
selection, and we find among Byron's poems many beautifu 
and appropriate lyrics. 

It is hoped that the notes may be found sufficiently elabo 
rate to pave the way to a full appreciation of the poems, with 
out hampering the instructor or interfering with the student 
self-activity. I was in such dread of over-editing, having severa 
terrible examples before my eyes, that my first intention wa 
to include nothing in the notes that could be found by th 
student in any ordinary work of reference. So rigorous 
policy, however, seemed to be mistaken in view of the fac 
that in some cases such works of reference may not be readil 
accessible ; hence the historical, geographical, and othe 
annotations. Some of Byron's allusions are of doubtful si£ 
nificance, and in such instances I have expressed merely a 
opinion. 



PREFACE ix 

Acknowledgments are due to Mr. John Murray, of London, 
or his courteous permission to use his definitive text of Byron's 
loems, as edited by Mr. Coleridge and published in the 
welve-volume edition of the prose and poetical works of Lord 
Jyron, and in the one-volume edition of the poems, both of 
/hich editions are imported into this country by Messrs. 
Charles Scribner's Sons. The spelling of this text has, with- 
•ut exception, been preserved, even in its obvious inconsisten- 
ces. Certain changes in Byron's erratic punctuation, however, 
eemed absolutely necessary in the interests of clearness. It 
nay be that the punctuation still remains somewhat inconsist- 
:nt both with itself and with modern usage, but it is hoped 
hat the poet's meaning will always be readily apparent. The 
obligation to Mr. Murray is profound, since the use of his 
poleridge text, a monument of Byronic scholarship, greatly 
nhances the value of the present book. I am also indebted 
o my friend, Chief Justice Shackleford, of the Supreme Court 
)f Florida, for suggestions as to the nature of the selections, 
md to my friend and colleague, Professor B. C. Bondurant, for 
aluable aid in many ways. c „, 

Tallahassee, Florida 



CONTENTS 



Page 

[ntroduction xiii 

Laciiin Y Gair i 

Maid of Athens, ere we Part 3 

jloDERN Greece 4 

S.NOW Ye the Land? 5 

She Walks in Beauty 6 

Song ok Saul before his Last Battle*. .... 7 

Vision ok Belshazzar ........ 8 

Tiik Destruction ok Sennacherib 10 

stanzas kor Music n 

Napoleon's Farewell 13 

Stanzas for Music 14 

Fare Thee Weli 15 

Sonnet on Chillon . ........ 17 

The Prisoner of Chillon 18 

Stanzas to Augusta 32 

Prometheus 34 

When we Two Parted 36 

The Coliseum by Moonlight 38 

To Thomas Moore 39 

Selections from Childe Harold 

Greece before the Revolution of 1821 . . . . 41 

The Eve before Waterloo 14 

The Rhine 46 

Venice . 47 

xi 



x ii SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Page 

The " Cascata del Marmore " 49 

Rome 50 

The Dying Gladiator 5^ 

The Ocean 53 

Mazeppa vS5 

Stanzas 8 4 

Stanzas Written on the Road between Florence and Pisa 85 

Selections from Don Juan 

"'Tis Sweet to Hear ..." 87J 

The Shipwreck j . . . 8» 

The Isles of Greece 94 

Sweet Hour of Twilight 97\ 

On this Day I Complete my Thirty-sixth Year . . 9S 



INTRODUCTION 

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 

Less than a century ago Byron shared with Napoleon the 
onder of Europe. With the sole exception of Shakespeare, 
rron a great tne autnor oi Childe Harold and Do?i Juan is still 
storicai and to the foreign world by far the greatest figure in 
erary gure English poetry. His influence upon European litera- 
ire has been almost incalculable. Perhaps never did a man's 
^rsonality more deeply impress his generation ; and Byron's 
)ems are but a revelation of his personality, — complex, power- 
1, and brilliant. All this inevitably leads us to some considera- 
Dn of the poet's life, character, and place in literature. 

Byron, always something of a fighter and adventurer, sprang 
om an old and fighting stock. The Byrons, or Buruns, were 
Ton's Normans, who came over with the Conqueror, 

cestry an( j are men tioned in his Domesday Book. They 

irhaps took part in the Crusades ; certainly they fought at 
-ecy, and at Calais one of them was knighted. Various Sir 
>hns, Sir Richards, and Sir Nicholases continued the fighting 
idition, and in 1643 one particular Sir John, a prominent 
Dyalist, was created Baron of Rochdale for his services to 
e royal cause. 

For us the chief interest in Byron's pedigree begins with 
22, in which year his great-uncle, the fifth lord, was born. 
l he wicked "The wicked lord," as he came to be known, 
i " having murdered a relative, Mr. Chaworth, bore 

unenviable reputation. He left the ancestral property in 



XIV 



SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 



a ruinous condition, and made the name of Byron a rather 
questionable heritage for his descendants. His brother, John 
The seaman Byron, became a famous seaman and traveler, who 
and traveler wr ote an entertaining autobiography, from which 
his illustrious grandson, the poet, gained material for some 
of his poetry. 

The eldest son of this traveler and seaman, also named John 
Byron, the father of the poet, was born in 1751, and became a 
captain in the Guards. He was a dissipated, worthless fellow/ 

known as " Mad Jack," though his character seems; 
"Mad Jack" J , . 

to have been somewhat redeemed by a certain^ 

careless generosity and good nature. He eloped with the wifej 
of the Marquis of Carmarthen, and married her after she had, 
secured a divorce from her former husband. 0:1 
Byron's birth ^ marriage was born Augusta, afterwards Mrsj 
Leigh, the poet's half-sister. This first wife died in 1784, anc! 
in the next year the fortune hunter entrapped a Scotch lady] 
Miss Catherine Gordon, of Gight, who was of an old famirj 
and possessed considerable estates. On January 22, 1788J 
the boy known as George Gordon Byron was born in Hollej 
Street, London. Soon after this event, having squandered a| 
of his wife's fortune, "Jack" Byron deserted his family, fleli 
to France, and there died in 1 791. u 

The boy George came into the world heavily handicappec 
His father's race was a violent one ; his mother's, foolisl 
Had Byron's mother been other than she wa 

Character of J . , 

Byron's the tenor of her son's life might have been moi 

mother equable. But "Mrs. Byron," as the boy ofte 

called her, was a vain, impulsive woman, hysterical and pa 
sionate, and utterly capricious in her treatment of her sojl 
She alternately abused and petted him ; would berate him 
a "lame brat" one instant, and caress him the next. S 
although she was always ready to sacrifice herself for Mil 



INTRODUCTION XV 

nd doubtless really loved him in her own way, their relations 
rere in general most unfortunate. She was no mother for such 

boy as Byron, — headstrong, passionate, moody, as he was. 

Your mother's a fool," once remarked a fellow-schoolboy. 

I know it," was the startling and significant reply. 

This was not all : Byron was lame. This lameness has 
een the subject of endless controversy ; but it is now finally 
yron's stated, and probably with truth, that he "was 

ness afflicted with an infantile paralysis which affected 
tie muscles of the right leg and foot." From this resulted 

slight limp, never corrected, in spite of severe treatment, 
bout this deformity, which was scarcely noticeable, Byron 
p to the very end of his life was abnormally sensitive. 
What a pretty boy Byron is ! " remarked a friend of his 
urse ; " what a pity he is lame ! " Thereupon the boy, with 
ashing eyes, struck at her with his baby whip, exclaiming, 
Dinna speak of it ! " This abnormal sensitiveness undoubt- 
ily colored his views of society and embittered his disposition. 

Byron's life now falls into five clearly defined periods, — 
s early school life up to and through his Harrow days ; his 
ve epochs of university career ; his two years' stay in southern 
mm' s life Europe; his London residence, marriage, and 
ibsequent unpopularity ; and his life abroad until his death, 

1824, at the age of thirty-six. 

In 1790 Mrs. Byron took her son to Aberdeen and put 
m to school under various tutors. He showed himself a 
hooi days poor student, but read with avidity all the history 
Aberdeen anc j rom ance he could find. From 1794 to 1798 
! attended the grammar school, during which period he was 
nt, in order to recuperate after an attack of scarlet fever, 

Ballater. Here he wandered through the mountains and 
ded to his passionate love of the sea, gained at Aberdeen, 
e love of mountain scenery that glorifies so much of his 



XVI 

verse. 



SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 



In 1794, through the death of a cousin, he became the j 
nexTheir to the title, and in 1798 the death of -the wicked j 
lord " made him, at the age of ten, the sixth Lord Byron. 

After this event Mrs. Byron left at once for Newstead Abbey, j 
the ancestral estate in Nottinghamshire. The desolation ofj 
At Netting- the family home forced the two into residence atj 
ham Nottingham. Here young Byron was placed undeij 

the treatment of a quack named Lavender, who inflicted upon 
the boy unnecessary and fruitless torture, which he is said to* 
have borne with remarkable fortitude. When his tutor referred 
to his suffering he replied, -Never mind, Mr. Rogers; you 
shall not see any sign of it in me." Within a year he was 
taken to London for treatment and put to school at Dulwich. 
Here he was contented, and did well, according to 
Atnuiwich the testimony of Dr . Glennie, the head master, 
who speaks of Byron's wide reading in history and poetry, and 
of his good humor while, among his comrades. 

In spite of all this, however, Mrs. Byron was not satisfied 

and at her request her son was removed by his guardian 

Lord Carlisle, to the great public school at Han 

LifeatHarrow ^ Here he remained unti i l8 o 4 , leading prett 

much the ordinary schoolboy life — with a difference ; fo 

sometimes he went off by himself and dreamed. At this tim 

the head master of Harrow was Dr. Drury, a famous teachei 

who seems to have understood his eccentric yet gifted pupi 

and for whom Byron always entertained an affectionate regarc 

« He was," Byron says, " the best, the kindest (and yet stric 

too) friend I ever had ; and I look on him still as a fathe 

whose warnings I have remembered but too well, though tc 

late, when I have erred, and whose counsel I have but fo 

lowed when I have done well or wisely." Though he gre 

to love Harrow as the time approached for him to leave i 

Byron at first hated the discipline of the school, and w 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

fever an accurate scholar. But he was a great reader, and 
Ivas fond of declaiming, at which he was remarkably good. In 
ithletic sports, where he figured as a leader, swimming and 
-owing were his special favorites, for with these his lameness 
iid not interfere. Fighting, it seems, was a pastime with him ; 
md his physical prowess was often exercised in behalf of smaller 
md weaker boys, whom he characteristically regarded as the 
victims of tyranny. To one of these he once said, " Harness, 
f any one bullies you, tell me, and I '11 thrash him if I can." 

The warm friendships that were always to mark Byron's life 
3xisted even in his Harrow days. Among these friends were 
Friends at the Duke of Dorset, his favorite fag; Sir Robert 
Harrow Peel, afterwards the famous statesman ; and Lord 

tlare. For the last named, Byron's affection was peculiarly 
romantic. Many years later, after contact with the world had 
jomewhat embittered his disposition, his affection for Clare had 
suffered no change. As late as 182 1 he said, " I never hear the 
name of Clare without a beating of the heart, even now." But 
tione of these friends played any great part in his after life. 

More romantic than any friendship, and perhaps as lasting 
is any attachment Byron ever experienced, was his very real 
Miss cna- an d ardent love for his cousin, Mary Ann Cha- 
worth worth. The love was all on Byron's side, however, 

[or the young lady was so far from returning the senti- 
ment that she could rather unfeelingly refer to her young 
lover as " that lame boy," — a remark which Byron overheard 
and bitterly resented. Miss Chaworth married in 1805, and 
Byron never wholly recovered from this first disappointment. 
ttts powerful poem, The Dream, written in 18 16, is merely a 
testimony to the strength and duration of the attachment. 

In 1805 Byron regretfully left Harrow for Trinity Col- 
lege, Cambridge. Here he took his M.A. degree three years 
later, apparently without really earning it ; for his studies were 



xviii SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

very erratically conducted, and he was absent from college 

during the entire year of 1807. Though Byron wished to go toj 

Life at Cam- Oxford, and so entered Cambridge in a bad temper,] 

bridge ve t he made the most of his life there, from ai 

social standpoint at least. For sports — cricket, shooting, box-l 

ing, and riding — he felt all his former fondness, and in them] 

showed the same leadership as at Harrow. Again he becamd 

the center of a coterie of friends, — this time a brilliant set, : 

some of whom were to influence his later life, and one or two) 

of whom, such as Hobhouse and Hodgson, were to remain 

forever his ardent champions. Newstead Abbey had been let, 

and Byron spent his vacations in London, and with 
Byron's rela- J l 

tions with his his mother at Southwell. The scenes that here tooW 
mother place between mother and son were surely such as 

never other poet experienced. At times Mrs. Byron seemed 
quite insane ; and on one occasion both separately made vis-; 
its to the local apothecary, each begging him not to sell poison 
to the other. Quarrels and reconciliations alternated, and 
deserve attention only because such unnatural relations could 
not fail to have their effect for the worse on Byron's dispo-i 
sition, and should perhaps mitigate our blame for certair 
features of his after life. 

Poetry was an early passion with Byron, and in January 

1807, he privately printed his first volume, Poems 011 Various 
Occasions. This was followed in March by a second volume 
printed at Newark, which he called Hours of Idleness. In this 
not very remarkable effort there was still some little promise o:| 
"Hours of genius, but its main importance lies in the fact tha f 
idleness ' ' ft prompted the famous criticism written by Lore 
Brougham, and printed in The Edinburgh Review for January) 

1808. The Edinburgh's onslaught was terrific. The inoffen| 
sive little volume of juvenile verse certainly did not deserve 
the sarcasm and abuse heaped upon it by the distinguishec 



INTRODUCTION xix 

ritic ; but that was often the way of critics in those days. The 
view stung Byron to fury. He had long been an admirer of 
he poetry of Pope, and now deliberately planned an elaborate 
terary satire, after the model of The Dmiciad, which should 
ttack, and, as the author hoped, annihilate, not only the Scotch 
bviewers but the inoffensive English poets as well. 
At Cambridge Byron indulged in all kinds of dissipation, 
hich, in accord with his histrionic character, he had the bad 
aste to boast about. What he told about himself, little as his 
xploits redounded to his credit, was probably true, and he 
ife at New- loved to parade it. Such was his tendency almost 
tead Abbey to t h e enc [ f hj s iif e , until Missolonghi made 
im a hero. Newstead being now untenanted, he took up 
is residence there, surrounding himself with a wild and 
ilarious set, — Hobhouse, Matthews, Scrope Davies, and 
ther Cambridge friends. High carnival reigned in the fine 
Id Gothic building ; but to such revels it had, perhaps, long 
een accustomed. All sorts of absurd and outrageous prac- 
ices were encouraged. The company dressed as monks and 
rank wine out of a human skull made into a drinking cup ; 
ot up in the dead of night to practice pistol shooting; and 
ldulged in many other freaks of the same kind. 

Byron loved animals, and surrounded himself now as always 
nth a whole menagerie of pets, — dogs, monkeys, parrots, 
nd bears. He once took a pet bear to college with him, 
ove of ani- anc * on b em S asked what he meant to do with it 
iais: Boat- responded, to the indignation of the college author- 
ities, " He shall sit for a fellowship." To Boat- 
wain, a Newfoundland dog, he was especially attached, 
/hen Boatswain died his master's misanthropy, as well as his 
)ve for his pet, found expression in the famous epitaph, 

To mark a friend's remains these stones arise ; 
I never knew but one, and here he lies, — 



xx SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

a statement both untrue and affected, but not without some! 
excuse. Such sentiments, if sincere, sprang naturally, event 
inevitably, from Byron's morbid outlook on life. He alter-j 
nated between fits of hilarious mirth and moods of profound; 
gloom. His satirical and clear-sighted friend, Scrope Daviesl 
must have proved a wholesome antidote. " I shall go mad,"j 
the poet once exclaimed, in one of his despairing and pas-J 
sionate moods. " It is much more like silliness than madness,"! 
cuttingly remarked Davies. 

Byron's coming of age in 1809 was, on account of lack on 
means, celebrated very quietly at Newstead ; and after this! 
event the young peer went up to London to take his seat inji 
the House of Lords. When introduced, he appeared awkward j 
and ill at ease. "I have taken my seat, and now I will go 
abroad," was his remark after the ceremony. In the same< 
Byron's com- month English Bards and Scotch Rcvieiuers, the H 
mmseofLords^ sat i re on which he had been working for a year,i 
"English was given to the public. Its effect was immediate. | 
Scote^Re ^ e scatnm g sarcasm, often merciless and in thej 
viewers" worst possible taste, fell alike on the just and on the 
unjust, on small and on great, even on such famous poets ass 
Scott and Moore. It delighted the public, and forever estab- 
lished Byron's ability to fight his own battles, and the impos- 
sibility of attacking him with impunity. The lamb had shown 
himself a lion. But he soon became heartily ashamed of his 
boyish satire, and tried to withdraw it from circulation ; while 
some of the poets he so unjustly attacked became afterwards 
his warmest friends. 

The third epoch in Byron's life began in 1809, when he 
borrowed money and left England for an extended tour 
through southern Europe, accompanied by his friend Hob- 
house and several servants. After visiting Portugal and Spain, 
he stopped at Sardinia and Malta, and spent the greater part 



INTRODUCTION \xi 

f two years wandering about Albania and Greece. He was 
Dtertained by the famous Albanian bandit and despot, Ali 
'asha ; visited Missolonghi, where some twelve years later he 
/as to die ; and spent several months at Athens, where he 
nished the first canto of Childe Harold and met the young 
tour through girl to whom he addressed his Maid of Athens. 
outhemEu- T n March, 1S10, he was at Smyrna. Here he corn- 
Maid of Ath- pleted the second canto of Childe Harold, and 
ns " shortly after, in April of the same year, accom- 

)lished his famous feat of swimming across the Hellespont. 
)f this achievement Byron was inordinately proud, and he 
elebrated it both in his letters and in his poems. He took 
special delight in the classical associations connected with 
his exhibition of his prowess and looked upon himself as a 
econd Leander. For over a year he wandered about the 
.djacent country, visiting Constantinople, and incidentally 
gathering material for his Eastern romances. Some of his 
idventures were undoubtedly romantic enough for even his 
laring disposition, but they gathered around them the most 
ibsurd exaggerations, and to this day it is difficult to separate 
he truth from the falsehood. Whatever may have been the 
•omantic side of this two years' wandering, the experience 
Drobably fostered the poet's personal interest in Greece, pro- 
vided him with new literary material, and certainly greatly 
mlarged his knowledge of the world. 

Tired of this sort of life, Byron finally returned to England 
)y sea in July, 1811. He reached home to find trouble. Not 
jetum to on ty were his finances in a desperate state, but his 

England; mother died on August 1, before he could reach 
leath of , . , _ , , , , , _, , , 

Byron's ner slcle - " I now i ee l the truth of Gray s obser- 

nother vation, that we only can have one mother. Peace 

oe with her," he said; and he spoke with sincerity, doubtless, 
Eor after all she was his mother, and had loved him. 



xxii SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Upon his return to England Byron entered on the fourtl 
period of his life, — that of his extraordinary London careei 
his first literary fame, his marriage, and his subsequent unpoj 
ularity. At this period began his warm friendship with the 
famous Irish poet, Tom Moore, whom he had ridiculed in 
LifeinLon- English Bar ds. The Irishman generously forgave 
don ; Tom tn e attack, and the two became the best of friends. 

IMoorc * 

"Chiide Moore's biography of his fellow- poet, The Letters 

Harold" and Journals of Lord Byron, is one of the most 

admirable books of its kind in existence, — discriminating 
trustworthy, and sympathetic. Shortly after his return, Byron 
was asked by his relative, Dallas what poems he had brought 
back with him. The poet handed over to his friend an inferior! 
satire which he had named Hints from Horace. Dallas, dis- 
appointed, asked, " Have you no other result of your travels? 
To this Byron answered, " A few short pieces, and a lot of i 
Spenserian stanzas ; not worth troubling you with, but you are. 
welcome to them." These "Spenserian stanzas" of which] 
their author thought so little were the first two cantos of Chiide 
Hai'old y whose publication, in the spring of 1812, brought 
immediate and widespread popularity. " I awoke one morn- 
ing and found myself famous," said the poet. These first two 
cantos of Chiide Harold, with their melancholy young hero, 
their declamatory rhetoric, and their commonplaces, were ex- 
actly on the level of their age, and suited the public taste 
to perfection. It may be doubted whether the two later and! 
infinitely finer cantos, written several years afterwards, could 
possibly have created so tremendous a sensation. 

Byron's youth, personal beauty, rank, and genius now lifted 
him to the pinnacle of social favor. He posed as a mere liter- 
ary dilettante, — a lord who amused himself by occasional 
ventures into literature, and aimed to discriminate sharply 
between professional writers, whom he affected to despise, 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

and men of rank who condescended to dabble in letters. This, 
however, was only a phase, and passed away as Byron grew 
B on's so- to ta ^ e ^ s art more seriously. These were years 
ciai and liter- of unalloyed social and literary triumphs; also, 
ary popularity ^ mugt ^ con f esse( ^ f dissipation, and of poetic 

power expended upon unworthy achievements. But Byron's 
literary activity was remarkable. The success of his Childe 
Harold stimulated him to further effort. His verse romances 
of Eastern life poured forth in astonishing profusion. Between 
May, 1813 and 18 16, The Giaour ; The Bride of Abydos, The 
Corsair, Lara, The Siege of Corinth, and Parisina were writ- 
ten and published. All are variations on one single theme, 
with but one hero under many disguises, and that hero Byron 
himself. Some of these tales were written in the meter that 
Scott had rendered popular, and, though inferior in many 
ways to Marmion and its companion pieces, quite eclipsed 
the fresher and more wholesome romances of the older poet. 
On the first day of its publication The Corsair sold ten thou- 
sand copies: and the total profits from all the 
The Eastern , , , , 

romances; tales amounted to several thousand pounds. But 

Hebrew^ Byron wrote for love of writing, not for money, 
though he needed the latter badly enough; so 
with characteristic generosity he handed over the proceeds 
to his rather ungrateful relative, Dallas. The Giaour is per- 
haps the best of these tales, now little read and almost for- 

otten, which represent the literary fashion of a day, and to 
the taste of the present generation seem commonplace and 
:rude. Hebrew Melodies, however, published early in 18 15, 
contained some excellent lyrics, among others the match- 
less She Walks in Beauty and the favorite Destruction of 
Sennacherib. 

Byron made several speeches in Parliament, and created a 
favorable impression. As a born orator and a vigorous protester 



xxiv SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

against what he considered oppression and tyranny, he might, 
Byron in Par- perhaps, have become a great parliamentary figure 
liament DU t ft | s fortunate for literature that his energies 

were turned into other channels. 

At this time Byron wore an air of rather pretentious melan- 
choly, which probably was sincere enough, but of which he 
was entirely too conscious. Though not without some excuse 
for his despondency, — the death of his mother, the recent loss 
of several intimate friends, the constant sense of his lameness, 
— he was still a born actor, and happy only when in the lime- 

b ron's mei- n § nt - ^ ne P ose was popular an d effective. In 

ancnoiy;Au- London, Byronic melancholy became the vogue. 

gus a eig Even the poet's very peculiarities of dress were 

imitated. Into this unwholesome atmosphere entered at least 

one refreshing influence. Augusta Leigh, Byron's half-sister, 

visited him in London in June, 1813. This visit strengthened 

their mutual affection, and the strong and beautiful bonds 

binding the brother and sister together were severed only 

by death. 

Among all the great men whom the poet met in his London 

life, none impressed him more than Scott. The mighty 

" Wizard of the North," whose poetic star had been eclipsed 

by Childe Harold, extended to the younger poet a generous 

appreciation and sympathy that could not fail to conciliate 

even one so resentful as Byron of any air of patronage and 

condescension. The two met in London in the spring of 

1 815, and again in September of the same year. Of Byron, 

Scott said : " What I liked about him, besides his 
Walter Scott 

boundless genius, was his generosity of spirit as 

well as of purse, and his utter contempt of all the affectations 

of literature. . . . He wrote from impulse, never from effort, 

and therefore I have always reckoned Burns and Byron the 

most genuine poetic geniuses of my time, and of half a century 



INTRODUCTION XXV 

before me. We have many men of high poetic talents, but none 

)f that ever-gushing and perennial fountain of natural waters." 

Byron felt that the time had come for him to marry ; and 

le now, at the age of twenty-six, deliberately made his choice 

or, rather, allowed it to be made for him. Anna Isabella 

ilbanke was pretty, clever, and accomplished. More than 

his, she was the daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, and an 

eiress. A marriage was finally arranged between the poet, 

ho needed money, and the heiress, who appreciated fame 

nd social position. The marriage, which took place on Jan- 

ry 2, 1815, was bound to be unhappy, and so it proved. 

Lady Byron probably at first loved her husband, 
_arriage to ' J . . 

Miss Mil- but loved herself more, and was quite intolerant 

ianke; sepa- f suc h irregularities as marked his social career : 

ation -—-5 — 

and Byron s character — impatient of restraint, 

ielf-centered, moody, passionate — was unintelligible to her. 

Only a year passed before Lady Byron, with her daughter 

A.da, one month old, left her husband forever. Her conduct 

las never been explained ; and Byron, so garrulous about 

nost of his private affairs, maintained on this one topic an 

ilmost complete silence. It is enough for us to know that 

:heir temperaments were incompatible. But the whole affair 

s so notorious, and bore so important a relation to the poet's 

ifter life, that it cannot be passed over without some mention. 

The separation marked the reaction of favor against the 

larling of society. The British public, according to Macaulay, 

low entered upon "one of its periodical fits of morality." Byron 

lad been overpraised ; he was now to be heartily condemned. 

Though he was no worse than other men of the same set, 

his misdemeanors were retailed, and innumerable 
Jnpopularity 

scandals about him were wholly invented. The 

;mall literary fry, who envied his success, joyously swarmed 

tbout to smirch his name ; the newspapers attacked him 



xxvi SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

unsparingly and bitterly ; an unfortunate and tactless poem, 
which he wrote in an angry mood, added to the universal 
indignation. Byron was ostracized from society — was even 
hissed on the streets. He had before been famous ; he was 
now infamous. There was only one thing for him to do, — 
to leave England forever. Years later he wrote : " The press 
was active and scurrilous. . . . My name — which had been a 
knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the 
kingdom for William the Norman — was tainted. I felt that if 
what was whispered and muttered and murmured was true, I 
was unfit for England ; if false, England was unfit for me." 

So in April, 1816, he left his country, home, and friends. 
Final de ^ s nnances were, as usual, in a tangle. Two 

parture from years later Newstead had to be sold, and the pro- 
England C eeds — ninety thousand pounds — went mostly to 
pay off mortgages and debts. With this final departure from 
England began the fifth and last period of the poet's life. 

Byron's exile opened a new and better era of his poetic 
activity. It revealed to him a new world, and it was a tonic 
to his energies. Without it he might never have proved so 
great a poet and so powerful a force in European literature. 
He sailed first for Ostend, and traveled through Belgium, visit- 
ing Brussels, where his imagination heard the " sound of revelry 
by night," and Waterloo, where his " tread was on an empire's 
dust " ; he went up the Rhine, his " exulting and abounding 
river," and thence to Basel, Bern, Lausanne, and Geneva. At 
the last-named city he met Shelley. Byron now came into inti- 
mate contact with a poet whose idealism profoundly attracted 

r n in nniu Shelley taught him many things, and his influ- 

Switzeriand; ence is seen in several of Byron's productions, 
Shelley £ rQm ^ no ble Prometheus to the more elaborate 

Prisoner of Chitton. Byron's attitude towards Shelley's poetry 
was not always favorable, — indeed, it is doubtful if he fully 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

ippreciated the great genius of his friend ; but his admira- 
ion for Shelley the man was unbounded, — "the best and 
.east selfish man I ever knew," he calls him. Shelley looked 
jpon Byron as 

The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame 
Over his living head like heaven was bent, 

3ut could scarcely sympathize with some of Byron's traits 

)f character or habits of life. Nevertheless, the friendship 

between the two poets, whose names are so often linked 

ogether, continued until the end. 

In September Byron journeyed through Switzerland, inci- 

lentally gathering material for his lyrical drama, Manfred, and 

or the later cantos of Childe Harold, in which the grandeur 

)f the Alpine scenery plays so large a part. Already, in June, 

tfhile detained by bad weather at a little village named Ouchy, 

. near Lausanne, he had written The Prisoner of 
The Prisoner J 

rfcniiion;" C/ullon, a tribute to moral and political liberty, 

• chime an( j a tremendous advance over his earlier romances 

larold again . 

in verse. About this time, too, he completed the 
hird canto of Childe Harold. Switzerland had taught him her 
nighty lessons, and in October he crossed over into Italy, ac- 
ompanied by his friend Hobhouse, the companion of his earlier 
vanderings. They journeyed first to Verona, then to Ferrara 
'which inspired The Lament of Tasso), to Florence, to Rome 
" the Niobe of nations," where he sat for his bust to the 
p-eat Danish sculptor, Thorwaldsen), and finally to his Mecca, 
/enice, the "sea Cybele, fresh from ocean." All through 

Pour through this tour the P oet had been collecting material 
taiy;"Man- for some of his noblest productions; but for us 
the fairest flower of the Italian wandering is the 
ourth canto of Childe Harold, a glorification of Italy, which 
vas finished in Venice in the early spring of 1818, about 



xxviii SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

the same time with Manfred, a strange, mystical, dramatic) 
poem bearing some general resemblance to Goethe's Fausm 
The period of Byron's Venetian residence — extending! 
through the greater part of two years — is one over whichf 
any lover of his fame would gladly draw a veil. Such a life 
of excesses of every kind was unworthy of a true man, mucHl 
more so of a great poet. He wallowed in the mire, withl 
results disastrous to his health, character, and reputation.!! 
But, strangely enough, the period was one oil 
f/veni'ceT 6 intense literary activity. One elaborate poemi 
"Mazeppa"; a fj_ er another was turned out, with seemingly}' 
" Don Juan " inexhaustible fertility, showing in the main a steady) 
growth in art and in power. To this period belong Beppi 
Mazeppa, and the earliest cantos of his masterpiece, Don 
Juan. In August, 1818, he was visited by Shelley, whl 
records their walks and talks in his Julian and Maddalk 
Tom Moore also came to see him while he was living ir! 
Venice, and in his famous biography gives many interesting 
details about his visit. As at Newstead, Byron had filled hi 
house with animals, and " Keep clear of the dog," " Take carej 
or the monkey will fly at you," were among his reassuring 
cautions to Moore as the two felt their way up the stairs ill 
the dark. 

At this time, too, there came into Byron's life an influenc 
which, though springing from an illegal relationship, brightens 
his existence and inspired his poetic genius. The Counter 
Guiccioli was the young and beautiful wife of an old Italia 
count. She was, furthermore, highly educated and attractive 
with considerable depth of character and capacity for feeling 
Byron and the countess met by chance ; the attachmerll 
Countess between the two was immediate and endurinj I 
Guiccioli Henceforth she played a large part in the poetc 

life. They were together now and again at Venice, Bologn 



INTRODUCTION xxix 

lavenna, Pisa, and Genoa, — in fact, until Byron left Italy 
pr Greece. Whatever we of the present day may think of 
he character of the relationship, and certainly that is beyond 
pprobation, it is admitted that the Countess Guiccioli was a 

pfining influence in Byron's life. She was a faithful friend, 
nd we must remember, in estimating her character, that 
talian society at this period was somewhat too tolerant of 
rch relationships. Any biography of Byron, however brief, 
r hich should omit some mention of so important a factor, 
ould be essentially incomplete. 

After some two years at Venice, Byron removed to Bologna, 
ad later to Ravenna. These changes of residence were dic- 
tated by the movements of the countess, whose 

fe at Ra- 

:nna ; liter- family, the Gambas, were ardent workers in the 
yactivity; cause f Italian liberty. When one locality grew 
uncomfortable for them by reason of the suspi- 
ons of the dominant Austrian government, they went else- 
here and continued their operations afresh. At Ravenna 
yron's literary activity continued unabated. Here he wrote 
is brilliant satire, The Vision of Judgjnent, and entered the lists 
; a dramatist with the Venetian plays, Marino Faliero and 
lie Two Foscari, as well as with the more successful Sardana- 
alus. None of these, however, compares in power of imagi- 
ition or in splendor of expression with the great dramatic 
3em, Cain, written at about the same time. 
Byron had always been an ardent and probably sincere, 
lough rather too declamatory, lover of liberty, both moral 
id political, and he had long been known to all Europe as 
the poet of revolt." " I have simplified my politics into an 
:ter detestation of all existing governments," he once said, 
is sympathy with the oppressed masses was rather com tr- 
ending, but he was nevertheless quite ready to act upon his 
try positive convictions. Italy was secretly struggling for 



XX x SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

independence of the galling Austrian yoke. The conspirators 
were working largely through a society known as the Carbonari. 
Of this organization Byron's friends, the Gambas, J 
Stowed" were enthusiastic members. The author of the. 
Italian free- fourth canto of Childe Harold and of The Prophecy 
dom of Dante, which was intended for the Italians as I 

vision of their independence, was naturally an object of sus- 
picion to the Austrians. For this Byron did not care a straw, 
and he delighted to flaunt his revolutionary principles in thi 
very faces of his foes. He moved about with the Gambas, 
however, and after consulting with Shelley, left Ravenna for 
Pisa in October, 1821. At this place Shelley had secured for 
his use the Lanfranchi palace, in which Byron lived and worked! 
industriously for ten months, riding and shooting/ 
Life at Pisa for amusement) an d entertaining his friends; 
Shelley was near by, at Lerici, on the Gulf of Spezia. 

Long before this time Byron had become a great figure ir 
the world's regard. The publication of one of his poems wa 
an important literary event. From his work he derived ; 
large income and could now afford to be independent. The 
tone of some of his later productions was such that his old 
London publisher, Murray, was unwilling to give them to th< 
public. In order to control a medium for the circulation oi 
his ideas and the publication of his poems, he conceived th 
notion of founding a periodical of his own. Largel ;i 
gh The nt at Shelley's instigation, Leigh Hunt, the Londol 






and 



Liberal" ra dical and poet, was asked over to take charge d 
the new venture, which was to be named The Liberal In Jul)' 
1822, the Hunts — for the editor was accompanied by his wif 
and six children — appeared on the scene. Four numbers c 
The Liberal were published, the last in July, 1823. But thi 
venture was a failure, mainly owing to the fact that, in th 
very nature of things, two such men as Hunt and Byron coul! 



INTRODUCTION xxxi 

Dt agree. The Hunts were impecunious and improvident, and 
died on Byron's bounty. Of this attitude the poet soon tired. 
he result was disruption and the financial failure of the paper. 

Before The Liberal had ceased publication, however, and 
hile Leigh Hunt was still at Byron's house, occurred a trag- 
iy that plunged both men into mourning. In July, 1822, 
helley was drowned while sailing on the Gulf of Spezia. 
yron was present at the cremation of the body, that weird 
sath of an d tragic event which has impressed itself so 
ieiiey powerfully upon the imagination of mankind. 

In the following September Byron removed to Genoa, his 
nal place of residence in Italy. Here he finished the six 
;enth canto of Dan Juan, still leaving the poem incomplete, 
his was his last work of any note. He now stood on the verv 
innacle of poetic fame. He had proved his power as a lyrist, 
ritten one of the greatest of descriptive poems, accomplished 
jnoa;"Don something in the drama, and as narrative poet 
; an " and satirist reigned supreme. Nothing, apparently, 

;mained to be achieved in the realm of poetry. He was 
rowing tired of it all, even of the applause and adulation 
^at once were as music in his ears. Pleasure palled on him ; 
issipation had left its inevitable and ugly mark upon his health 
[id his noble personal beauty. He wanted new worlds to 
onquer, and soon came the opportunity. Greece was in the 
jidst of a desperate struggle for independence of Turkey, 
eset with foes without and within, she was in dire straits for 
: ecianiib- want °^ monev an d competent leadership. In 
ty:anew England a "Greek Committee" of prominent 
men had been formed to promote the cause of 
recian independence. This committee felt the need of 
Jding to their number some great name of powerful influ- 
iice among the Greeks themselves. In April, 1823, Byron 
as elected to membership. After a creditable hesitation he 



xxxii SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

accepted, and offered money and counsel. Tired of inaction] 
dissatisfied with his former achievements, longing for new 
renown, and genuinely sympathizing with the Greeks, he 
threw himself into the cause with all his wonderful ardor and 

Byron's de- ener gY- ° n J ul y J 4, 1823, he sailed for Greecej 

parture for on the brig Hercules, which he had purchased 

and loaded with stores and arms. And now opens 

the last and by far the most creditable act in the complicated 

drama of the poet's life. 

In August Byron reached his destination, Cephalonia, and 

there remained until the end of the year, awaiting instruc] 

tions. With this period is connected an interesting anJ 

amusing experience that throws a peculiar side light upon 

certain aspects of the poet's character. Dr. Kennedy, a 

Scotch physician and a warm Presbyterian, was conducting a 

series of religious meetings at the neighboring 
At Cephalo- „ A ,. ^ 7 . , ,1 

nia-Dr. Ken- town of Argostoli. Byron, always a curious though 

nedy and re- sometimes a scoffing inquirer, had from the begiin 

ning been interested in religion. Without anj 

really justifiable basis, he had been looked upon in Englandi: 

especially since the publication of Cain, as an utter atheist j 

Fond of religious disputation, and arguing acutely yet good' 

humoredly upon religious subjects, he invariably representee 

himself as a seeker after light. After attending Dr. Kennedy': 

meetings he grew to know and admire the sincerely goocj 

man, and there ensued between the two a series of elaborati 

theological discussions in which the poet seems to have ha< 

the best of it, though up to the end the good doctor was stil 

hoping to bring his brilliant opponent to see the error of hi 

ways. But Byron can scarcely with justice be called a scoffej) 

at religion. His fundamental attitude toward such matters 

rather that of a skeptical yet really earnest seeker after tb| 

actual truth as apart from superstition and sham. 



INTRODUCTION xxxiii 

Finally, in December, Byron went to the stronghold of Mis- 
Olonghi to join the Greek leader, Prince Mavrocordatos. He 
*ought with him four thousand pounds of his personal loan 
nd the magic of his presence. Daring and resourceful as he 
/as, the situation that confronted him was enough to tax even 
is energy, sympathy, and clear judgment. But Byron had 
ever shown himself in his true colors until confronted with a 
Lssoionghi; situation that called ^r all the qualities of a hero, 
tyronasgen- Everywhere about him was discord, intrigue, mis- 
talesman mana gement, and disorder. In all this he showed 
himself a general and a statesman. At his touch 
nity sprang from discord, and order from confusion. Ships 
vere built, fortifications repaired, troops organized and drilled, 
'lis resourcefulness and self-command were instant and un- 
ailing. The Greeks recognized his ability by appointing him 
o lead the important military expedition against the Turkish 
tronghold, Lepanto; but, in spite of his eagerness to be in 
he actual conflict, this attack never took place. For all his 
ourage, Byron never had a chance to fight. 

On January 22, 1824, in the midst of confusion and alarms, 
:isiast he wrote his last poem of any note, the lines on 

oem(?) his t hi r ty- S ixth birthday. They breathe the new 

nd nobler spirit that was now animating his life : 

The sword, the banner, and the field, 
Glory and Greece, around me see ! 

The Spartan, borne upon his shield, 
Was not more free. 

Pleasure, ease, luxury, self-contentment, even poetry, had 
een left behind forever. The hero had replaced the man of 
be world ; the soldier, the poet. About this time came the 
Bginning of the end. Byron's health, undermined by wrong 
ving and by the extremely ascetic regimen he insisted upon 



xxxiv SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

following, began to give way under the strain. Missolonghi 
was a fever-stricken place, which his friends were continually* 
The begin- beseeching him to leave. But he stuck to his post,] 
ning of the end though beset by sickness and burdened with heavy] 
cares. When preparing for the attack against Lepanto, the| 
Suliotes, forming a contingent of the Greek troops, revolted. 
This threw Byron into a convulsive attack, from which he had 1 
not recovered when the mutinous soldiers actually broke intol 
his sick room, demanding redress. His courage and control] 
of the situation, under these terrible circumstances, is said to 
have been sublime. 

Byron's will conquered. He rallied in health for a time," 
and displayed much of his former vivacity. On March 30 hes 
was presented with the freedom of the city of Missolonghi.; 
But the end was not far off. On April 9 he rode out, wall 
drenched with rain, yet insisted upon returning home in a 
b ron'sm- b° at - He was soon seized with a rheumatiq 
ness and fever, and all the efforts of his physicians proved, 
unavailing. In his delirium he fancied himself 
leading the attack against Lepanto, crying, " Forwards ! for-i 
wards ! follow me!" We cannot fail to recall the deathbed^ 
of " the great emperor who with the great poet divided tht 
wonder of Europe." He mentioned Lady Byron, Augusta hv: {] 
sister, Ada his daughter; and on April 19, with " Now I shal, 
go to sleep," he died. 

Byron's death, to the Greeks, came in the nature of « 
national calamity. Greece was plunged into mourning. Sh( 
had lost a brilliant and heroic champion, the one man abovok 
all others on whom her hopes were fixed. " England has los ;r 
her brightest genius, Greece her noblest friend," wrote Colone 
interment at Stanhope, another distinguished worker for Greciai, « 
Hucknaii freedom. The remains of the poet were sent dl 
England and arrived there in May. Interment in Westminste^ 



INTRODUCTION xxxv 

bbey was refused, and Byron was laid to rest on July i6, 
524, beside his mother and his ancestors, in the village 
aurchyard of Hucknall. 

Byron's personality and character have furnished food for 
most endless discussion. All who knew him agreed as to his 
onderful personal beauty and attractiveness. Scott said he 
id "a countenance to dream of," and an irresistible charm 
E address. His head was small, and covered with light-brown 
iris ; his complexion, colorless ; his eyes, light gray ; his 
■rsonaiap- moutn > perfectly molded. Various portraits agree 
arance; in giving him a high forehead, regularity of fea- 
tures, and an expression of brilliant intelligence, 
[is manner with his intimates was genial and delightful, 
lough not always equable ; his love of fun was almost supera- 
undant, manifesting itself in flashes between fits of melan- 
koly and depression. To the latter his lameness and his early 
ivironment, as well as his irregular habits, may have largely 
ontributed. Child of his strange race as he was, Byron was 
so the victim of unfortunate circumstances. This should 
ever be forgotten when we are estimating his wonderfully 
implex and paradoxical traits of character. 

What were those traits, forming the personality that so 
bwerfully impressed itself upon a whole continent? On the 
ne side, absurd vanity, often displayed in many unworthy 
ttle ways ; habitual arrogance and pride of rank ; an uncer- 
dn temper, impulsive, even violent, running into extravagant 
yron's un- fits of passion ; a tendency towards self-indulgence 
tractive side that led him, genius and poet though he was, into 
riminal excesses. 

I On the other and better side we find dauntless physical cour- 
se, and moral courage even more splendid than the physical ; 
j remarkable fondness for small, defenseless creatures of all 
inds; a warm heart for his friends and lasting fidelity and 



xxxvi SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

attachment to the few who befriended and believed in him; 
princely generosity of heart and purse ; but, even above all 
His finer this, the two supreme traits that make the man's' 

qualities poetry so great and enduring, — an intense and 
consuming hatred of hypocrisy and sham in every phase of life,] 
and just as sincere and ardent a love of every kind of liberty. 
Underneath all this superficial contradiction lay a will o$ 
iron and a capacity for genuine self-sacrifice and heroism that 
rose to actual greatness when occasion demanded, as at Misso- 
longhi. Byron was not a good man, but his character so colors: 
and molds his poetry as to render it inevitable that we should 
know something of his extraordinary personality. Compound 
of gold and clay that he was, his often sordid and unworthy] 
a final esti- life was fairly redeemed by his heroic death, and; 
mate so we mav s ^[\\ apply to him at least a part of| 

Dr. Johnson's beautiful tribute to his friend Goldsmith, — 
" Enough of his failings ; he was a very great man." 

Farewell, thou Titan fairer than the gods ! 

Farewell, farewell, thou swift and lovely spirit, 
Thou splendid warrior with the world at odds, 

Unpraised, unpraisable beyond thy merit ; 
Chased, like Orestes, by the furies' rods, 

Like him at length thy peace dost thou inherit ; 
Beholding whom, men think how fairer far 

Than all the steadfast stars the wandering star ! 

Andrew Lang, in Letters to Dead Authors 

BYRON AS A POET 

For almost a century Byron's place as a poet has been the' 
theme of constant dispute. Was he truly a great poet, or 
merely a retailer of cheap commonplaces clothed in preten- 
tious rhetoric? The distinguished English critic, Professoi 
Saintsbury, says : " Byron seems to me a poet distinctly o: 



INTRODUCTION wxvii 

he second class, ami not even of the best kind of second. 
. . His verse is to the greatest poetry what melodrama is 
o tragedy, what plaster is to marble, what pinchbeck is to 
jold" (A History of Nineteenth Century Literature, p. 80). 
But Mr. Matthew Arnold, perhaps the most famous of all 
Mversit of En S ush literar Y critics, himself a great poet, says, on 
pinion; the contrary : " Wordsworth and Byron stand, it 

iaintsburyand seems to me fi rst ancJ p reem inent in actual per- 

irnold L l 

formance, a glorious pair, among the English poets 
)f this century. . . . When the year 1900 is turned, and our 

.Uion comes to recount her poetic glories in the century 
vhich has then just ended, the first names with her will be 
hese " {Essay on Byron). 

Which shall we follow? or shall we rather find a safer point 
f view between these two extremes? 

Byron was born in the midst of an era of revolution. Five 
ears before his birth the American colonies had gained their 
tidependence. One year after his birth the French Revolu- 
ion began. For the fifty years following that terrible social 
ataclysm the progress of liberal ideas was widespread and 
apid. All Europe felt the new impulse toward national 
idependence and personal liberty, toward free thought, free 
peech, and democracy. Byron saw Napoleon's rise to supreme 
nage of power, his victories at Austerlitz, Marengo, Jena, 
volution and Wagram ; his retreat from Moscow, and his final 
verthrow at Waterloo. He saw old institutions, beliefs, and 
Ustoms summoned before the bar of reason and overthrown 
Imost in a day. He felt the powerful impulse toward new 
lought in politics, literature, and religion. He saw a common 
evolutionary sentiment make Liberty, Democracy, Reason, 
.evolution, the watchwords in almost every country of Europe. 

Byron and Shelley, far beyond all other English poets, were 
le children of this new thought. They were indeed " poets 



xxxviii SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

of revolt," not only abreast of the new movements in every 
sphere of activity, but even ahead of them. While Words- 
worth was quietly communing with Nature in his Westmore- 
land hills ; while Coleridge was dreaming about the supernatural, 
and Keats was worshiping Beauty, apart from the crowd, — 
Byron and Shelley, the apostles of revolution, were living and 
The "poets working in a world of men. Byron's poems, from 
of revolt" fi rs t t } asij rm g w i in vigorous protests against 
"tyranny," eloquent praise of "liberty," national and per- 
sonal, and bitter denunciation of oppression, superstition, and 
worn-out customs. In the main, the protest and the praise 
are real and sincere ; almost always they are eloquent ; often 
they are splendid. If Cain is a voice crying out for rational- ■ 
ism in religion, Childe Harold is one long, fervent tribute to' 
liberty and democracy, and Don Juan is one superb protest 
against superstition and sham. 

The reforms that Byron advocated, the ideas that he set 
forth through the entire range of his poems, were not fully to 
reach their fruition until almost a generation after his death, 
in the revolutions of 1848; but even during his lifetime he 
was to such an extent the voice of his revolutionary age that 
his name became to Europe at large the synonym of progress 
and revolt. The energy and power with which he set forth 
his opinions, and the pomp and circumstance with which he 
gathered up and interpreted the thought and emotion of a 
b ron's con- con tinent, dazzled the public and made it captive 
temporary to the splendid sweep and eloquence of his verse. 
This was his unique triumph while he lived, and it 
has since proved almost his undoing. That Byron was a great 
historic figure cannot be gainsaid ; but what remains, now that 
the reforms he so ardently advocated have long since becomel 
established facts, and the daring ideas he advanced have longr 
been platitudes? 



INTRODUCTION xxxix 

Byron's fascinating personality also had its effect on his 
nmense contemporary fame ; but the time has passed 

When thousands counted every groan, 
And Europe made his woe her own. 

he spell that enchanted Europe has dissolved ; yet some- 
ling fnore substantial still remains to be considered. 

Byron, as we have seen, even now figures to the continent 
> the greatest English poet next to Shakespeare. His works 
ave been translated into every important foreign language. 
fo less a poet and critic than Goethe has pronounced him 
the greatest genius of the century." Castelar, the Spaniard ; 
ainte-Beuve and Taine, the Frenchmen ; Elze, the German ; 
is influence Mazzini, the Italian, who said, "Byron led the 
>on European genius of Britain on a pilgrimage throughout all 
Europe," — all bear witness to his tremendous 
ifluence and universal popularity. So unanimous a verdict 
lould make us pause, and lead us to examine the evidence 
i which it is founded. 

Byron's literary activity was phenomenal. Within eighteen 

jars he wrote, as Mr. Coleridge reminds us, two epics or 

jasi-epics, twelve tales, eight dramas, seven or eight satires, 

, a and a multitude of occasional poems, lyrics, and 
pron's ver- r 7 J J 

tiiity; lack epigrams. This is the sum of his achievement, — 
lentand'of a versat ^ e one * Though his play Werner for a 
chitectonic time held the stage, as a dramatic poet he is vir- 
tually a failure. A dramatist must possess the gift 
objective characterization. In this Byron was singularly 
jcking. So self-centered a poet could create no real figures 
!>art from himself. " He made the men after his own image ; 
e women, after his own heart." Another fatal defect is 
pron's lack of what is called " the architectonic faculty," — 
e ability to plan and construct a harmonious and complete 



xl SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

whole. Childe Harold is but a series of short poems; even 
Don Juan is little more. Rendered a unit by the poetl 
personality only, Byron's masterpiece fascinates the mature 
reader not through the adventures of its hero, but through the 
poet's own comments and reflections, and through interspersed! 
lyric passages of singular beauty and power. 

This same failure in dramatic characterization follows u 
through all of Byron's earlier narrative poems. His elaborate 
Eastern tales, while they show narrative verve, and contain 
Byron's nar- admirable passages, have long since lost their 
rative poems pristine savor. The two narrative poems which 
still live as wholes, and must live indefinitely it would now 
seem, are The Prisoner of Chillon and Mazeppa, which are 
thoroughly true and sincere. 

Byron's place as a lyric poet is still in dispute. Certainly^ 
his really fine lyrics are few in number, but the author of She> 
Walks in Beauty, Stanzas to Augusta, On this Day I complete 
my Thirty-sixth Year, cannot be refused recognition as a lyrist. 
Byron as a That Byron is not a supreme lyric poet is due ratherl 
lyrist t i ac k of effort than to lack of power. The auto-ij 

biographic character of his best lyrics, laying bare to the whole! 
earth, utterly and some would say shamelessly, the poet's inmost} 
emotions, is redeemed by the powerful and complex person 
ality inspiring them and giving them interest and value. 

Childe Harold is beyond doubt a great contribution 

descriptive and reflective poetry ; and here Byron approacheit 

that climax of his power to be fully attained only in Don Juan\\ 

As a satirist Byron is quite supreme among Eng 
As descrip- 
tivepoet; as l lsn poets. Here we need not qualify our praise 

satirist; "Don Satire in the hands of this master is no longer sor 

Juan " 

did and realistic ; it is transfigured into something 
highly imaginative and ideal. Acute criticism of life, extemoi 
sive knowledge of human nature, the most abounding anil 



tc | 



INTRODUCTION xli 

bxhaustible energy, — all this abides in Byron's masterpiece, 

s chief claim to immortality. 

What is Byron's place among the world poets, the supreme 
w? Homer, yKschylus, Sophocles, Dante, Shakespeare, Mil- 
n, (ioethe, perhaps one or two others, were poets of the 
*hest architectonic power, and of unfailing art. Above all 
•on's place tn ^ s ' tne * r S reat works show a "high serious- 
ongthe ness" and a noble and consistent outlook on life, 
rid poets Among these poets of the first order it is doubt- 
l if Byron can with any justice be ranked. Though Don 
tan is an elaborate work of highly sustained art, it is defi- 
ant in characterization, in organism, and in a serious and 
nsistent point of view. Thus, superb as it is, it yet can 
arcely be placed among the world's supreme masterpieces 
poetry. 

We must, then, compare Byron with the poets of the second 
der, and, naturally, with those of England. Even here, 
we have seen, reigns a variety of opinion. As a close 
id accurate student of nature and a portrayer of her more 
timate and peculiar beauties, Byron cannot compare with 
'ordsworth. Neither has he the power to take a seem- 
Tonascom- ingly commonplace or prosaic subject and lift it 
red with his j nto poetry by the magic of his treatment, as do 
mporaries Wordsworth and Arnold. He has nothing of the 
,d successors haunting magic and rich melodies of Coleridge; 
ie delicacy, the sensuous beauty, as well as the perfect 
agression, of Keats, are utterly beyond him. With Shelley, 
; a lyric poet and a master of music, he cannot for an instant 
* compared. r I ennyson is an infinitely finer and more care- 
[1 artist. Byron is lacking in the sound knowledge of life, 
ie wide scholarship, the profound insight into the human 
ml, that render Browning so potent a force in poetry. What, 
ten, remains? 



xlii SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 






The answer is easily found. Any one who reads the few 
selections in the present volume cannot fail to be impressed' 
with the one trait that, above everything else, marks them aa 
a whole, — their fire, their vigor, their " exulting and abound- 
ing " energy. In this Byron takes his place second only to 
Shakespeare. Energy and strength are no small poetical assets. 
Byron is the greatest singer of the mountains and the sea. 
The Apostrophe to the Ocean, the stanzas on the Alps, thi 
Someperma- Rhine, the Marble Cascade, in the energy and/ 
of Q b ron^s" 58 swee P °f tneir splendid verse, are worthy of theii 
poetry theme. Byron, too, can make the dead past livl 

again as can no other poet : he finds out the poetry in historf 
and quickens it to life. We are swept along with him in thi 
impetuous torrent of his verse, and inspired by the poet's owii 
emotion. 

It is idle to say that Byron is only too often a faulty artistjt 

careless, sometimes even uncouth. He does not belong to thi 

order of the poets of art. He worked on a large scale, — painted 

Byron not an on an immense canvas in vivid colors. To assert! 

art poet furthermore, that Byron says only the thing thai} 

is obvious, is instantly to provoke the answer that he says thaji 

thing as no other could, and glorifies it while saying it. He iji 

perhaps not a profoundly original thinker, yet he expressed 

interpreted, and applied the thought of a whole continent. A\ 

definite philosophy of life and coherent teaching he nevei; 

attempted, but he voiced universal hopes and aspirations ■ 

spirited and inspiring verse. His faults of technic, even hi: 

frequent lapses from good taste, are forgotten ir 
His essential , . * . r & r ,.„,,. 

greatness : ms actual greatness. After reading all of his work 

sincerity and — unequal, disappointing, crude, as much of i 

is, — we must finally say, with Mr. Swinburne, tha 

" his is the splendid and imperishable excellence of sincerity 

and strength." 



INTRODUCTION xliii 

REFERENCES 

The standard, and apparently definitive, edition of the complete 
)rks of Lord Byron is that published by Mr. John Murray of 
)ndon. In this edition the prose works, in six volumes, are 
ited by Mr. R. W. Prothero ; and the poetical works, in seven 
Humes, are edited by Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge. A one- 
Hume edition, The Poetical Works of Lord Byron, is also pub- 
:hed by Mr. John Murray, with introduction and notes by Mr. 
Meridge. Both editions are imported into this country by 
jessrs. Charles Scribner's Sons. For ordinary purposes the 
[e-volume edition is superior to any other and can hardly 
superseded. 

For a further study of Byron and his poems the student will 
d the following critical and biographical books and articles 
lpf ul and interesting : 

Byron, by John Nichol, in the English Men of Letters Series. 
Essay on Moore's Life of Lord Byron, Macaulay. 
Byron, by Matthew Arnold, in Essays in Criticism, Second Series. 
The Byron Revival, by W. P. Trent, in The Authority of Criticism. 
Byron, by Theodore Watts-Dunton, in the revised edition of 
'lambers's Encyclopedia of English Literature. 

Needless to say, the bibliography of Byron is almost endless, 
is not so easy, however, to find estimates of his genius which 
f neither on the side of undue depreciation nor on that of exces- 
re praise. There is only one way by which to arrive at a satis- 
ctory conclusion, — and that is by a thorough and careful 
ading of Byron's works. 



SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 



LACHIN Y GAIR 

rhis poem was first printed in Hours of Idleness ; 1807. It is prob- 
r the best of Byron's juvenile poems. 

' Lachin y Gair, or, as it is pronounced in the Erse, Loch na Garr, 
ers proudly preeminent in the northern Highlands, near Invercauld. 
! of our modern tourists mentions it as the highest mountain, per- 
s, in Great Britain. Be this as it may, it is certainly one of the most 
lime and picturesque amongst our ' Caledonian Alps.' Its appearance 
f a dusky hue, but the summit is the seat of eternal snows. Near 
hin y Gair I spent some of the early part of my life, the recollection 
rhich has given birth to these stanzas." — Byron's note 



AWAY, ye gay landscapes, ye gardens of roses ! 
l\ In you let the minions of luxury rove ; 
Restore me the rocks, where the snow-flake reposes, 

Though still they are sacred to freedom and love : 
et, Caledonia, belov'd are thy mountains, 

Round their white summits though elements war ; 
hough cataracts foam 'stead of smooth-flowing fountains, 

I sigh for the valley of dark Loch na Garr. 

II . 

h ! there my young footsteps in infancy wander'd : 
My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid ; 

n chieftains, long perish'd, my memory ponder 'd, 
As daily I strode through the pine-cover'd glade ; 



2 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

I sought not my home till the day's dying glory 
Gave place to the rays of the bright polar star ; 

For fancy was cheer'd by traditional story, 

Disclos'd by the natives of dark Loch na Garr. 

Ill 

" Shades of the dead ! have I not heard your voices 

Rise on the night-rolling breath of the gale? " 
Surely, the soul of the hero rejoices, 

And rides on the wind, o'er his own Highland vale ! 
Round Loch na Garr, while the stormy mist gathers, 

Winter presides in his cold icy car : 
Clouds there encircle the forms of my Fathers ; 1 

They dwell in the tempests of dark Loch na Garr. 

IV 
" 111 starr'd, though brave, did no visions foreboding 

Tell you that fate had forsaken your cause ? " 
Ah ! were you destin'd to die at Culloden, 2 

Victory crown'd not your fall with applause : 
Still were you happy : in Death's earthy slumber 

You rest with your clan in the caves of Braemar ; 
The Pibroch 3 resounds, to the piper's loud number, 

Your deeds, on the echoes of dark Loch na Garr. 

V 

Years have roll'd on, Loch na Garr, since I left you, 
Years must elapse ere I tread you again : 

Nature of verdure and flowers has bereft you, 
Yet still are you dearer than Albion's plain : 

1 Many of Byron's maternal ancestors, the Gordons, fought for the Stua 
Pretender, Prince Charles. 

2 Culloden : the battle that put an end to the hopes of the House of Stuai 
It was fought near Inverness, Scotland, April 16, 1746. 

s Pibroch : the martial music played on the bagpipe, but in this instant 
Byron probably refers to the instrument itself. 



MAID OF ATHENS, ERE WE PART 

England ! thy beauties are tame and domestic, 
To one who has rov'd on the mountains afar : 

Oh ! for the crags that are wild and majestic, 

The steep, frowning glories of dark Loch na Garr. 



MAID OF ATHENS, ERE WE PART 

Zo>r/ fxov, cms dyairC) 

This, perhaps the most popular of Byron's lyrics, was written at 
Athens in 1810, and addressed to a young girl, Theresa Macri, daughter 
f Byron's landlady, the widow of a former English vice consul. The 
jxreek refrain means " My life, I love you." 



MAID of Athens, ere we part, 
Give, oh give me back my heart ! 
Or, since that has left my breast, 
Keep it now, and take the rest ! 
Hear my vow before I go, 
Zo)rj fxov, cm? ayairoi. 

II 

By those tresses unconfined, 
Wooed by each ^Egean wind ; 
By those lids whose jetty fringe 
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge ; 
By those wild eyes like the roe, 
Zwrj fxov, eras ayairui. 

Ill 

By that lip * long to taste ; 
By that zone-encircled waist; 



SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

By all the token-flowers that tell 
What words can never speak so well ; 
By Love's alternate joy and woe, 
Tiinrj fjiov, cas aya-iru. 

IV 
Maid of Athens ! I am gone : 
Think of me, sweet ! when alone. 
Though I fly to Istambol, 1 
Athens holds my heart and soul : 
Can I cease to love thee ? No ! 
Zwrj fxov, acts dya7T(o. 



MODERN GREECE 
(From The Giaour) 

HE who hath bent him o'er the dead 
Ere the first day of Death is fled, 
The first dark day of Nothingness, 
The last of Danger and Distress, 
(Before Decay's effacing fingers 
Have swept the lines where Beauty lingers,) 
And marked the mild angelic air, 
The rapture of Repose that 's there, 
The fixed yet tender traits that streak 
The languor of the placid cheek, 
And — but for that sad shrouded eye, 
That fires not, wins not, weeps not, now, 
And but for that chill, changeless brow, 
Where cold Obstruction's apathy 
Appals the gazing mourner's heart, 
As if to him it could impart 

1 Istambol : Constantinople. 



KNOW \ E THE LAND? 5 

The doom he dreads, yel dwells upon ; 

¥es, l>ut for these and these alone, 

Some moments, aye, one treacherous hour, 

I le still might doubt the Tyrant's power ; 20 

So fair, so calm, so softly sealed, 

The first, last look by Death revealed ! 

Such is the aspect of this shore : 

'T is Greece, but living Greece no more ! 

So coldly sweet, so deadly fair, 

We start, for Soul is wanting there. 

Hers is the loveliness in death, 

That parts not quite with parting breath ; 

But beauty with that fearful bloom, 

That hue which haunts it to the tomb, 30 

Expression's last receding ray, 

A gilded Halo hovering round decay, 

The farewell beam of Feeling past away ! 
Spark of that flame, perchance of heavenly birth, 
Which gleams, but warms no more its cherished earth ! 



KNOW YE THE LAND? 

This introduction to The Bride of A by Jos, written in 1813, was 
erhaps suggested by the opening lines of Goethe's Mignon: 
" Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bliihn ? " 



KNOW ye the land where the cypress and myrtle 
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime? 
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle, 

Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime? 
Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, 
Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine ; 



6 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppressed with perfume, 

Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gul 1 in her bloom ; 

Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, 

And the voice of the nightingale never is mute ; 

Where the tints of the earth, and the hues of the sky, 

In colour though varied, in beauty may vie, 

And the purple of Ocean is deepest in dye ; 

Where the virgins are soft as the roses they twine, 

And all, save the spirit of man, is divine — 

Tis the clime of the East — 'tis the land of the Sun — 

Can he smile on such deeds as his children have done ? 

Oh ! wild as the accents of lovers' farewell 

Are the hearts which they bear and the tales which they tell. 

SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY 

(From Hebrew Melodies) 

Byron, at the request of a friend, wrote a number of lyrics to be 
set to music. In April, 1815, these were published, with the music 
under the title of Selections of Hebrew Melodies. Though the poet was, 
or pretended to be, ashamed of the volume, at least five of its twenty 
three poems have achieved immortality. Only fifteen are on Biblical 
themes ; and the first in order, She Walks in Beauty, has for its sum 
ject Anne Horton, who married Byron's cousin, Robert Wilmot. 
This is perhaps Byron's most finished lyric poem, though written 
long before his poetic power reached its climax. 

I 

SHE walks in Beauty, like the night 
Of cloudless climes and starry skies ; 
And all that 's best of dark and bright 

Meet in her aspect and her eyes : 
Thus mellowed to that tender light 
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies. 

1 Gul : the rose. 



SONG OF SAUL BEFORE HIS LAST BATTLE 

II 

One shade the more, one ray the less, 
Had half impaired the nameless grace 

Which waves in every raven tress, 
Or softly lightens o'er her face ; 

Where thoughts serenely sweet express 
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 

Ill 

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow, 

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent, 
The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 

But tell of days in goodness spent, 
A mind at peace with all below, 

A heart whose love is innocent ! 



SONG OF SAUL BEFORE HIS LAST BATTLE 

The death of Saul is related in i Samuel xxxi ; though Byron's 
'png is of course purely imaginary. 

I 

WARRIORS and Chiefs ! should the shaft or the sword 
Pierce me in leading the host of the Lord, 
Heed not the corse, though a King's, in your path : 
Bury your steel in the bosoms of Gath ! 

II 

Thou who art bearing my buckler and bow, 
Should the soldiers of Saul look away from the foe, 
Stretch me that moment in blood at thy feet ! 
Mine be the doom which they dared not to meet. 



SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

III 

Farewell to others, but never we part, 
Heir to my Royalty — Son of my heart ! 
Bright is the diadem, boundless the sway, 
Or kingly the death, which awaits us to-day ! * 



VISION OF BELSHAZZAR 

The Vision of Belshazzar is based upon Daniel v. 



THE King was on his throne, 
The Satraps thronged the hall 
A thousand bright lamps shone 

O'er that high festival. 
A thousand cups of gold, 

In Judah deemed divine — 
Jehovah's vessels hold 

The godless Heathen's wine ! 

II 

In that same hour and hall, 

The fingers of a hand 
Came forth against the wall, 

And wrote as if on sand : 
The fingers of a man ; — 

A solitary hand 
Along the letters ran, 

And traced them like a wand. 

1 Tn this last stanza Saul addresses Jonathan. 



VISION OF BELSHAZZAR 

ill 

The monarch saw, and shook, 

And bade no more rejoice ; 
All bloodless waxed his look, 

And tremulous his voice. 
" Let the men of lore appear, 

The wisest of the earth, 
And expound the words of fear, 

Which mar our royal mirth." 

IV 

Chaldea's seers are good, 

But here they have no skill ; 
And the unknown letters stood 

Untold and awful still. 
And Babel's men of age 

Are wise and deep in lore ; 
But now they were not sage, 

They saw — but knew no more. 



A captive in the land, 

A stranger and a youth, 
He heard the King's command, 

He saw that writing's truth. 
The lamps around were bright, 

The prophecy in view ; 
He read it on that night, — 

The morrow proved it true. 

VI 

" Belshazzar's grave is made, 
His kingdom passed away, 



10 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

He, in the balance weighed, 
Is light and worthless clay ; 

The shroud, his robe of state, 
His canopy the stone ; 

The Mede is at his gate ! 

The Persian on his throne ! " 



THE DESTRUCTION OF SENNACHERIB 

See 2 Kings xviii and xix for the historical incident. 

I 

THE Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, 
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold ; 
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, 
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. 

II 

Like the leaves of the forest when Summer is green, 
That host with their banners at sunset were seen : 
Like the leaves of the forest when Autumn hath blown, 
That host on the morrow lay withered and strown. 

Ill 

For the angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, 
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed ; 
And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, 
And their hearts but once heaved — and forever grew still ! 

IV 

And there lay the steed with his nostril all wide, 
But through it there rolled not the breath of his pride ; 
And the foam of his gasping lay white on the turf, 
And cold as the spray of the rock-beating surf. 



STANZAS FOR MUSIC i i 

V 
And there lay the rider distorted and pale, 
With the dew on his brow, and the rust on his mail: 
And the tents were all silent — the banners alone — 
The lances nnlifted — the trumpet unblown. 

VI 

And the widows of Ashnr l are loud in their wail, 
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal; 
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword, 
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord ! 

STANZAS FOR MUSIC 

THERE 'S NOT A JOY THE WORLD CAN GIVE 

O Lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros 
Ducentium ortus ex animo: quater 
Felix ! in imo qui scatentem 
Pectore te, pia Nympha, sensit. 

— Gray's Poemata 

These stanzas were written on hearing of the death of the Duke of 
3orset, who was killed by a fall from his horse while hunting, in March, 

15. Dorset had been among Byron's warmest friends at Harrow. 

"Do you remember the lines I sent you early last year? ... I 
nean those beginning, ' There 's not a joy the world can give,' etc., on 
irhich I pique myself as being the truest, though the most melancholy, 
ever w T rote." — Byron's letter to Moore, Mareli, 1S16 

I 

THERE'S not a joy the world can give like that it takes 
away, 
Vhen the glow of early thought declines in Feeling's dull decay ; 
Tis not on Youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades 

so fast, 
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere Youth itself be past. 

1 Ashur : the highest god of the Assyrians ; but the word here stands for the 
ountry of Assyria itself. 



12 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

II 

Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness 
Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt or ocean of excess : 
The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain 
The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again. 

Ill 

Then the mortal coldness of the soul like Death itself comei 

down ; 
It cannot feel for others' woes, it dare not dream its own ; 
That heavy chill has frozen o'er the fountain of our tears, 
And though the eye may sparkle still, 'tis where the ice appears* 

IV 

Though wit may flash from fluent lips, and mirth distract thi 

breast, 
Through midnight hours that yield no more their former hop© 

of rest ; 
'T is but as ivy-leaves around the ruined turret wreath, 
All green and wildly fresh without, but worn and grey beneath,! 



V 

Oh, could I feel as I have felt, — or be what I have been, 
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished 

scene ; 
As springs, in deserts found, seem sweet, all brackish though 

they be, 
So, midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow tq] 

me. 



NAPOLEON'S FAREWELL 1 3 

NAPOLEON'S FAREWELL 

(From the French) 

This poem was written in London in 1815, soon after the battle 
f Waterloo. It is one of several productions concerned with Napo- 
jon, " the great Emperor who with the great poet divided the won- 
er of Europe." The anapaestic meter employed in this and several 
ther of Byron's most popular poems is one that lends itself easily 
b spirited effects. It was a great favorite with Tom Moore, whose 

fluence is clearly seen both here and elsewhere, as in the Stanzas for 
[usic and Stanzas written between Florence and Pisa. 



FAREWELL to the Land where the gloom of my Glory 
Arose and o'ershadowed the earth with her name — 
he abandons me now — but the page of her story, 
lie brightest or blackest, is filled with my fame, 
have warred with a World which vanquished me only 
^hen the meteor of conquest allured me too far ; 
have coped with the nations which dread me thus lonely, 
he last single Captive to millions in war. 

II 

arewell to thee, France ! when thy diadem crowned me, 
made thee the gem and the wonder of earth, — 
fut thy weakness decrees I should leave as I found thee, 
)ecayed in thy glory and sunk in thy worth, 
fh ! for the veteran hearts that were wasted 
n strife with the storm, when their battles were won — 
"hen the Eagle, whose gaze in that moment was blasted, 
lad still soared with eyes fixed on Victory's sun ! 

Ill 

arewell to thee, France ! — but when Liberty rallies 
^nce more in thy regions, remember me then, — 



14 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

The Violet 1 still grows in the depth of thy valleys ; 

Though withered, thy tear will unfold it again. 

Yet, yet, I may baffle the hosts that surround us, 

And yet may thy heart leap awake to my voice — 

There are links which must break in the chain that has bound 

us, 
Then turn thee and call on the Chief of thy choice ! 

STANZAS FOR MUSIC 

(Written in England, March, 1816) 

I 

THERE be none of Beauty's daughters 
With a magic like thee ; 
And like music on the waters 

Is thy sweet voice to me : 
When, as if its sound were causing 
The charmed Ocean's pausing, 
The waves lie still and gleaming, 
And the lulled winds seem dreaming : 

II 

And the Midnight Moon is weaving 

Her bright chain o'er the deep ; 
Whose breast is gently heaving, 

As an infant's asleep : 
So the spirit bows before thee, 
To listen and adore thee ; 
With a full but soft emotion, 
Like the swell of Summer's ocean. 

1 The violet : when Napoleon was banished to Elba, in April, 181 4, it wa 
predicted by his partisans that he would return to France with the violets in the 
following spring. For this reason the violet was taken as the Napoleonic 
emblem. Now, though defeated and exiled, Napoleon is represented in the 
poem as hoping to return from St. Helena, as he did from Elba. 



FARE THEE WELL 



FARE THEE WELL 



15 



The sincerity of this poem, which was written in March, [816, 
on after the separation from Lady Byron and shortly before the 
poet's final departure from England, has been seriously questioned. 
It seems almost incredible that any man, even one so spectacular as 
Byron, could lay bare to the world such emotions. Yet, according to 
Byron, as quoted by Moore, the verses were written under stress of 
profound feeling, were not intended for publication, and were given 
to the public only " through the injudicious zeal of a friend whom he 
suffered to take a copy." 

Alas ! they had been friends in youth; 
But whispering tongues can poison truth ; 
And Constancy lives in realms above; 
And life is thorny ; and youth is vain ; 
And to be wroth with one we love, 
Doth work like madness in the brain. 



But never either found another 

To free the hollow heart from paining — 

They stood aloof, the scars remaining, 

Like cliffs which had been rent asunder; 

A dreary sea now flows between, 

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, 

Shall wholly do away, I ween, 

The marks of that which once hath been. 

— Coleridge's Christabel 

FARE thee well ! and if forever, 
Still forever, fare thee well: 
Even though unforgiving, never 

' Gainst thee shall my heart rebel. 
Would that breast were bared before thee 

Where thy head so oft hath lain, 
While that placid sleep came o'er thee 
Which thou ne'er canst know again : 
Would that breast, by thee glanced over, 

Every inmost thought could show ! 
Then thou would'st at last discover 
Twas not well to spurn it so." 



lb SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Though the world for this commend thee — 

Though it smile upon the blow, 
Even its praises must offend thee, 

Founded on another's woe : 
Though my many faults defaced me, 

Could no other arm be found, 
Than the one which once embraced me, 

To inflict a cureless wound ? 
Yet, oh yet, thyself deceive not — 

Love may sink by slow decay, 
But by sudden wrench, believe not 

Hearts can thus be torn away : 
Still thine own its life retaineth — 

Still must mine, though bleeding, beat ; 
And the undying thought which paineth 

Is — that we no more may meet. 
These are words of deeper sorrow 

Than the wail above the dead ; 
Both shall live — but every morrow 

Wake us from a widowed bed. 
And when thou would'st solace gather — 

When our child's first accents flow — 
Wilt thou teach her to say " Father ! " 

Though his care she must forego? 
When her little hands shall press thee — 

When her lip to thine is pressed — 
Think of him whose prayer shall bless thee — 

Think of him thy love had blessed ! 
Should her lineaments resemble 

Those thou never more may'st see, 
Then thy heart will softly tremble 

With a pulse yet true to me. 
All my faults perchance thou knowest — 

All my madness — none can know ; 



SONNET ON CHILLON i; 

All my hopes — where'er thou goest 

Wither — yet with thee they go. 
Every feeling hath been shaken ; 

Pride — which not a world could bow so 

Bows to thee — by thee forsaken, 
Even my soul forsakes me now. 

But 'tis done — all words are idle 

Words from me are vainer still ; 
But the thoughts we cannot bridle 

Force their way without the will. 
Fare thee well ! thus disunited — 
Torn from every nearer tie — 

Seared in heart — and lone — and blighted 

More than this I scarce can die. 60 



SONNET ON CHILLON 

This sonnet, one of the noblest of its kind, though prefixed to 
rhe l^nsoner of Chilian, was in fact written later than that poem as 
n especial tribute to the Swiss patriot, Bonnivard. 

Francois de Bonnivard was born near Geneva, in 1496, and succ- 
eeded in 15 10 to the priory of St. Victor, just outside the walls of 
(he city. As an ardent republican, he espoused the cause of Geneva 
gainst the Duke of Savoy, on whose entrance into the city in 15 ro 
ionmvard was seized and imprisoned for two years at Grolee. Again, 
1 1530, he was captured by robbers and handed over to the Duke 
ho this time imprisoned him in the famous Castle of Chillon. Here 
onn.vard remained for six years, until liberated by the Bernese and 
enevese. By this time Geneva had established her freedom, and 
ie patriot was honored and pensioned by the people for whom he 
ad suffered so long. Bonnivard lived in peace through the remainder 
^ his life, wrote a history of Geneva, and, when he died, either in 
57o or in 157 1, left his books as a legacy to the city. 



ETERNAL Spirit of the chainless Mind ! 
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty ! thou art 
For there thy habitation is the heart — 
The heart which love of thee alone can bind ; 



18 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

And when thy sons to fetters are consigned — 
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom, 
Their country conquers with their martyrdom, 

And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. 

Chillon ! thy prison is a holy place, 

And thy sad floor an altar — for 't was trod, 

Until his very steps have left a trace 

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, 

By Bonnivard ! — May none those marks efface ! 
For they appeal from tyranny to God. 

THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 



Among the great lakes of the world, Geneva is famous for th 
beauty of its surroundings and the depth and purity of its waters. It 
was known to the Romans as Lacus Lemannus, whence Byron's favorite 
name for it, " Lake Leman." 

At the eastern end of Lake Geneva, on an isolated rock at the 
edge of the water, rises the picturesque building known as the Casthl 
of Chillon, its walls washed by the waters of the lake, which hert, 
attain a depth of nearly one thousand feet. The foundations of the 
castle date from a very early period; though as it stands, with its! 
one central tower surrounded by towers either semicircular or squaret 
it is essentially of the thirteenth century. In the eighteenth century 
it was used as a state prison, and afterwards as an arsenal. In thi: 
building, rendered famous by his genius, Byron lays the scene of hi: 
Prisoner of Chillon. The hero of the poem is an entirely fictitioui 
personage, whose dreadful captivity bears little resemblance to tha 
of Bonnivard, although the latter is often and wrongly supposed t< 
be the hero. But Byron himself says in the " advertisement" pre 
fixed to The Prisoner of Chillon : " When this poem was composed 
was not sufficiently aware of the history of Bonnivard, or I shouli 
have endeavoured to dignify the subject by an attempt to celebrat 
his courage and his virtues." 

But, although the whole story is purely imaginary, we must alloi 
the poem — in addition to its high poetic truth — a certain measur 
of historical probability, when we remember the deeds done in th: 
days of religious intolerance and persecution, before men had learne* 
to acknowledge the freedom of the individual conscience. 

Byron wrote The Prisoner of Chillon in two days — June 26 and 
1816, while detained by bad weather at the village of Ouchy, ne 







< ' A.STLE OF CHILLON 
Exterior 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 



19 



Bausanne. In dignity of theme and in descriptive power it far sur- 
passes any of the narrative poems th.it preceded it. The hopeless 
captivity, the deaths of the two young brothers, the prisoner's grief, 
lis unconsciousness of time and space in 

A sea of stagnant idleness, 

Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless; 

the carol of the bird arousing him from his despair, his contentment 
with captivity, and at last — the crown of his desolation — his regain- 
ing his freedom with a sigh, — all these are scenes that could be 
adequately pictured only by the hand of a great master. 



MY hair is grey, but not with years, 
Nor grew it white 
In a single night, 
As men's have grown from sudden fears : 
My limbs are bowed, though not with toil, 

But rusted with a vile repose, 
For they have been a dungeon's spoil, 

And mine has been the fate of those 
To whom the goodly earth and ait- 
Are banned and barred — forbidden fare ; 
But this was for my father's faith 
I suffered chains and courted death ; 
That father perished at the stake 
For tenets he would not forsake ; 
And for the same his lineal race 
In darkness found a dwelling-place ; 
We were seven — who now are one, 

Six in youth and one in age, 
Finished as they had begun, 

Proud of Persecution's rage; 
One in fire, and two in field, 
Their belief with blood have sealed, 
Dying as their father died, 
For the God their foes denied ; — 



20 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Three were in a dungeon cast, 

Of whom this wreck is left the last. 

II 

There are seven pillars of Gothic mould, 
In Chillon's dungeons deep and old, 
There are seven columns, massy and grey, 
Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, 
A sunbeam which hath lost its way, 
And through the crevice and the cleft 
Of the thick wall is fallen and left ; 
Creeping o'er the floor so damp, 
Like a marsh's meteor lamp : 
And in each pillar there is a ring, 

And in each ring there is a chain ; * 
That iron is a cankering thing, 

For in these limbs its teeth remain, 
With marks that will not wear away, 
Till I have done with this new day, 
Which now is painful to these eyes, 
Which have not seen the sun so rise 
For years — I cannot count them o'er, 
I lost their long and heavy score 
When my last brother dropped and died, 
And I lay living by his side. 

Ill 

They chained us each to a column stone, 
And we were three — yet, each alone; 
We could not move a single pace, 
We could not see each other's face, 

1 This is said to be an accurate description of the interior of the castle, excepts 
that the third column bears no trace of ever having had a ring. On the southern, 
side of this third column is carved Byron's name. 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 2 I 

But with that pale and livid light 

That made us strangers in our sight : 

And thus together — yet apart, 

Fettered in hand, but joined in heart, 

'T was still some solace in the dearth 

Of the pure elements of earth, 

To hearken to each other's speech, 

And each turn comforter to each 

With some new hope, or legend old, 60 

Or song heroically bold ; 

But even these at length grew cold. 

Our voices took a dreary tone, 

An echo of the dungeon stone, 

A grating sound, not full and free 

As they of yore were wont to be : 

It might be fancy — but to me 
They never sounded like our own. 

IV 

I was the eldest of the three, 

And to uphold and cheer the rest 70 

I ought to do — and did — my best — 
And each did well in his degree. 

The youngest, whom my father loved, 
Because our mother's brow was given 
To him, with eyes as blue as heaven — 

For him my soul was sorely moved : 
And truly might it be distressed 
To see such bird in such a nest ; 
For he was beautiful as day — 

(When day was beautiful to me 80 

As to young eagles, being free) — 

A polar day, which will not see 



22 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

A sunset till its summer 's gone, 

Its sleepless summer of long light, 
The snow-clad offspring of the sun : 

And thus he was as pure and bright, 
And in his natural spirit gay, 
With tears for naught but others' ills, 
And then they flowed like mountain rills, 
Unless he could assuage the woe 90 

Which he abhorred to view below. 

V 

The other was as pure of mind, 
But formed to combat with his kind ; 
Strong in his frame, and of a mood 
Which 'gainst the world in war had stood, 
And perished in the foremost rank 

With joy : — but not in chains to pine : 
His spirit withered with their clank, 

I saw it silently decline — 

And so perchance in sooth did mine : 
But yet I forced it on to cheer 
Those relics of a home so dear. 
He was a hunter of the hills, 

Had followed there the deer and wolf ; 

To him this dungeon was a gulf, 
And fettered feet the worst of ills. 

VI 

Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls : 
A thousand feet in depth below 
Its massy waters meet and flow ; 
Thus much the fathom-line was sent 
From Chillon's snow-white battlement, 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 23 

Which round about the wave enthralls: 
A double dungeon wall and wave 
Have made — and like a living grave. 
Below the surface of the lake 
The dark vault lies wherein we lay : 1 
We heard it ripple night and day ; 

Sounding o'er our heads it knocked ; 
And I have felt the winter's spray 
Wash through the bars when winds were high 1 20 

And wanton in the happy sky ; 

And then the very rock hath rocked, 

And I have felt it shake, unshocked, 
Because I could have smiled to see 
The death that would have set me free. 

VII 

I said my nearer brother pined, 

I said his mighty heart declined ; 

He loathed and put away his food ; 

It was not that 'twas coarse and rude, 

For we were used to hunters' fare, 130 

And for the like had little care : 

The milk drawn from the mountain goat 

Was changed for water from the moat ; 

Our bread was such as captives' tears 

Have moistened many a thousand years, 

Since man first pent his fellow men 

Like brutes within an iron den ; 

But what were these to us or him ? 

These wasted not his heart or limb ; 

My brother's soul was of that mould 140 

1 The level of the dungeon is now about ten feet above the lake, and could 
lever at any time have been below its surface. 



SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Which in a palace had grown cold, 

Had his free breathing been denied 

The range of the steep mountain's side ; 

But why delay the truth? — he died. 

I saw, and could not hold his head, 

Nor reach his dying hand — nor dead, — 

Though hard I strove, but strove in vain, 

To rend and gnash my bonds in twain. 

He died — and they unlocked his chain, 

And scooped for him a shallow grave 

Even from the cold earth of our cave. 

I begged them, as a boon, to lay 

His corse in dust whereon the day 

Might shine — it was a foolish thought, 

But then within my brain it wrought, 

That even in death his freeborn breast 

In such a dungeon could not rest. 

I might have spared my idle prayer — 

They coldly laughed — and laid him there : 

The flat and turfless earth above 

The being we so much did love ; 

His empty chain above it leant, 

Such Murder's fitting monument ! 

VIII 

But he, the favourite and the flower, 
Most cherished since his natal hour, 
His mother's image in fair face, 
The infant love of all his race, 
His martyred father's dearest thought, 
My latest care, for whom I sought 
To hoard my life, that his might be 
Less wretched now, and one day free ; 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 25 

He, too, who yet had held untired 

A spirit natural or inspired — 

He, too, was struck, and day by day 

Was withered on the stalk away. 

Oh, God ! it is a fearful thing 

To see the human soul take wing 

In any shape, in any mood : 

I 've seen it rushing forth in blood, 

I 've seen it on the breaking ocean 180 

Strive with a swoln convulsive motion, 

I 've seen the sick and ghastly bed 

Of Sin delirious with its dread : 

But these were horrors — this was woe 

Unmixed with such — but sure and slow : 

He faded, and so calm and meek, 

So softly worn, so sweetly weak, 

So tearless, yet so tender — kind, 

And grieved for those he left behind ; 

With all the while a cheek whose bloom 190 

Was as a mockery of the tomb, 

Whose tints as gently sunk away 

As a departing rainbow's ray ; 

An eye of most transparent light, 

That almost made the dungeon bright ; 

And not a word of murmur — not 

A groan o'er his untimely lot, — 

A little talk of better days, 

A little hope my own to raise, 

For I was sunk in silence — lost 200 

In this last loss, of all the most ; 

And then the sighs he would suppress 

Of fainting Nature's feebleness, 

More slowly drawn, grew less and less : 



26 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

I listened, but I could not hear ; 

I called, for I was wild with fear ; 

I knew 't was hopeless, but my dread 

Would not be thus admonished ; 

I called, and thought I heard a sound — 

I burst my chain with one strong bound, 210 

And rushed to him : — I found him not, 

/ only stirred in this black spot, 

/ only lived, / only drew 

The accursed breath of dungeon-dew ; 

The last, the sole, the dearest link 

Between me and the eternal brink, 

Which bound me to my failing race, 

Was broken in this fatal place. 

One on the earth, and one beneath — 

My brothers — both had ceased to breathe ! 220 

I took that hand which lay so still — 

Alas ! my own was full as chill ; 

I had not strength to stir, or strive, 

But felt that I was still alive — 

A frantic feeling, when we know 

That what we love shall ne'er be so. 

I know not why 

I could not die, 
I had no earthly hope — but faith, 
And that forbade a selfish death. 230 

IX 

What next befell me then and there 

I know not well — I never knew — 
First came the loss of light, and air, 

And then of darkness too : 
I had no thought, no feeling — none — - 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 



27 



Among the stones I stood a stone, 

And was, scarce conscious what I wist, 

As shrubless crags within the mist ; 

For all was blank, and bleak, and grey ; 

It was not night — it was not day ; 240 

It was not even the dungeon-light, 

So hateful to my heavy sight, 

But vacancy absorbing space, 

And fixedness — without a place ; 

There were no stars — no earth — no time — 

No check — no change — no good — no crime — 

But silence, and a stirless breath 

Which neither was of life nor death ; 

A sea of stagnant idleness, 

Blind, boundless, mute, and motionless. 250 

X 

A light broke in upon my brain, — 

It was the carol of a bird; 
It ceased, and then it came again, 

The sweetest song ear ever heard ; 
And mine was thankful till my eyes 
Ran over with the glad surprise, 
And they that moment could not see 
I was the mate of misery ; 
But then by dull degrees came back 
My senses to their wonted track ; 260 

I saw r the dungeon walls and floor 
Close slowly round me as before ; 
I saw the glimmer of the sun 
Creeping as it before had done, 
But through the crevice where it came 
That bird was perched, as fond and tame, 



28 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

And tamer than upon the tree ; 
A lovely bird, with azure wings, 
And song that said a thousand things, 

And seemed to say them all for me ! 
I never saw its like before, 
I ne'er shall see its likeness more : 
It seemed like me to want a mate, 
But was not half so desolate, 
And it was come to love me when 
None lived to love me so again, 
And cheering from my dungeon's brink, 
Had brought me back to feel and think. 
I know not if it late were free, 

Or broke its cage to perch on mine, 28 

But knowing well captivity, 

Sweet bird ! I could not wish for thine ! 
Or if it were, in winged guise, 
A visitant from Paradise ; 
For — Heaven forgive that thought ! the while 
Which made me both to weep and smile — 
I sometimes deemed that it might be 
My brother's soul come down to me ; 
But then at last away it flew, 

And then 'twas mortal well I knew, 29 

For he would never thus have flown — 
And left me twice so doubly lone, — 
Lone — as the corse within its shroud ; 
Lone — as a solitary cloud, 

A single cloud on a sunny day, 
While all the rest of heaven is clear, 
A frown upon the atmosphere, 
That hath no business to appear 

When skies are blue, and earth is gay. 






THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 29 

XI 

A kind of change came in my fate, 300 

My keepers grew compassionate ; 

I know not what had made them so, 

They were inured to sights of woe, 

But so it was : — my broken chain 

With links unfastened did remain, 

And it was liberty to stride 

Along my cell from side to side, 

And up and down, and then athwart, 

And tread it over every part ; 

And round the pillars one by one, 310 

Returning where my walk begun, 

Avoiding only, as I trod, 

My brothers' graves without a sod ; 

For if I thought with heedless tread 

My step profaned their lowly bed, 

My breath came gaspingly and thick, 

And my crushed heart felt blind and sick. 

XII 

I made a footing in the wall, 

It was not therefrom to escape, 
For I had buried one and all, 320 

Who loved me in a human shape ; 
And the whole earth would henceforth be 
A wider prison unto me : 
No child — no sire — no kin had I, 
No partner in my misery ; 
I thought of this, and I was glad, 
For thought of them had made me mad ; 
But I was curious to ascend 
To my barred windows, and to bend 



30 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Once more, upon the mountains high, 330 

The quiet of a loving eye. 

XIII 

I saw them, and they were the same, 

They were not changed like me in frame ; 

I saw their thousand years of snow 

On high — their wide long lake below, 

And the blue Rhone in fullest flow ; 

I heard the torrents leap and gush 

O'er channelled rock and broken bush ; 

I saw the white-walled distant town, 1 

And whiter sails go skimming down ; 340 

And then there was a little isle, 

Which in my very face did smile, 

The only one in view ; 
A small green isle, 2 it seemed no more, 
Scarce broader than my dungeon floor, 
But in it there were three tall trees, 
And o'er it blew the mountain breeze, 
And by it there were waters flowing, 
And on it there were young flowers growing, 

Of gentle breath and hue. 350 

The fish swam by the castle wall, 
And they seemed joyous each and all ; 
The eagle rode the rising blast, 
Methought he never flew so fast 
As then to me he seemed to fly ; 

1 Villeneuve. 

2 " Between the entrances of the Rhone and Villeneuve, not far from Chillon, 
is a very small island ; the only one I could perceive, in my voyage round and 
over the lake, within its circumference. It contains a few trees (I think not 
above three), and from its singleness and diminutive size has a peculiar effect 
upon the view." — Byron's note. 




'v\"~ 



■ \ ' if 



% 



It- 






Castle of Chillon 
Interior 



THE PRISONER OF CHILLON 



31 



And then new tears came in my eye, 

And I felt troubled — and would fain 

I had not left my recent chain ; 

And when I did descend again, 

The darkness of my dim abode 360 

Fell on me as a heavy load ; 

It was as is a new-dug grave, 

Closing o'er one we sought to save, — 

And yet my glance, too much opprest, 

Had almost need of such a rest. 

XIV 

It might be months, or years, or days — 

I kept no count, I took no note — 
I had no hope my eyes to raise, 

And clear them of their dreary mote ; 
At last men came to set me free ; 370 

I asked not why, and recked not where ; 
It was at length the same to me, 
Fettered or fetterless to be, 

I learned to love despair. 
And thus when they appeared at last, 
And all my bonds aside were cast, 
These heavy walls to me had grown 
A hermitage — and all my own ! 
And half I felt as they were come 
To tear me from a second home : 380 

With spiders I had friendship made, 
And watched them in their sullen trade, 
Had seen the mice by moonlight play, 
And why should I feel less than they? 
We were all inmates of one place, 
And I, the monarch of each race, 



32 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Had power to kill — yet, strange to tell ! 
In quiet we had learned to dwell ; 
My very chains and I grew friends, 
So much a long communion tends 
To make us what we are ; — even I 
Regained my freedom with a sigh. 

STANZAS TO AUGUSTA 

These stanzas were written at the Villa Diodati, near Geneva, July 
1816, and form one of several poems addressed to the poet's hal: 
sister, Augusta (Mrs. Leigh), who was true to her brother through 
his career, and for whom he felt the warmest affection up to the ver 
end of his life. This is but one among Byron's many autobiograph 
ical poems, the egotism of which is amply redeemed by the revel 
tion of a rich and interesting personality. 

I 

THOUGH the day of my Destiny 's over, 
And the star of my Fate hath declined, 
Thy soft heart refused to discover 

The faults which so many could find ; 
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, 

It shrunk not to share it with me, 
And the Love which my Spirit hath painted 
It never hath found but in Thee. 

II 

Then when Nature around me is smiling, 

The last smile which answers to mine, 
I do not believe it beguiling, 

Because it reminds me of thine ; 
And when winds are at war with the ocean, 

As the breasts I believed in with me, 
If their billows excite an emotion, 

It is that they bear me from Thee. 



STANZAS TO AUGUSTA 

III 

Though the rock of my last Hope is shivered, 

And its fragments are sunk in the wave, 
Though 1 feel that my soul is delivered 

To Pain — it shall not be its slave. 
There is many a pang to pursue me : 

They may crush, but they shall not contemn — 
They may torture, but shall not subdue me — 

'Tis of Thee that I think — not of them. 

IV 

Though human, thou didst not deceive me, 

Though woman, thou didst not forsake, 
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me, 

Though slandered, thou never couldst shake, — 
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, 

Though parted, it was not to fly, 
Though watchful, 't was not to defame me, 

Nor, mute, that the world might belie. 

V 

Yet I blame not the World, nor despise it, 

Nor the war of the many with one ; 
If my soul was not fitted to prize it, 

'T was folly not sooner to shun : 
And if dearly that error hath cost me, 

And more than I once could foresee, 
I have found that, whatever it lost me, 

It could not deprive me of Thee. 

VI 

From the wreck of the past, which hath perished, 
Thus much I at least may recall, 



33 



34 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

It hath taught me that what I most cherished 

Deserved to be dearest of all : 
In the Desert a fountain is springing, 

In the wide waste there still is a tree, 
And a bird in the solitude singing, 

Which speaks to my spirit of Thee. 



PROMETHEUS 

Prometheus was written in July, 1816, at the Villa Diodati. Here 
began the most interesting of Byron's friendships, that with his great t 
fellow-poet, Shelley. This poem, in subject at least, shows thef; 
influence of Shelley, who afterwards, in his Prometheus Unbotind, , 
produced a lyrical drama on the same theme, — a favorite one since I 
the days of /Eschylus. Byron's protest against tyranny is here voiced! 
in a strain rather more elevated than was characteristic of him. The 
student will find it interesting to compare Byron's poem with the fines 
Prometheus of Longfellow. (For the story of Prometheus, see Gay- - 
ley's Classic Myths (1903), pp. 44—46.) 



TITAN ! to whose immortal eyes 
The sufferings of mortality, 
Seen in their sad reality, 
Were not as things that gods despise ; 
What was thy pity's recompense? 
A silent suffering, and intense ; 
The rock, the vulture, and the chain, 
All that the proud can feel of pain, 
The agony they do not show, 
The suffocating sense of woe, 

Which speaks but in its loneliness, 
And then is jealous lest the sky 
Should have a listener, nor will sigh 
Until its voice is echoless. 



PROMETHEUS 35 

II 

Titan ! to thee the strife was given 
Between the suffering and the will, 
Which torture where they cannot kill ; 

And the inexorable Heaven, 

And the deaf tyranny of Fate, 

The ruling principle of Hate, 

Which for its pleasure doth create 

The things it may annihilate, 

Refused thee even the boon to die : 

The wretched gift Eternity 

Was thine — and thou hast borne it well. 

All that the Thunderer wrung from thee 

Was but the Menace which flung back 

On him the torments of thy rack ; 

The fate thou didst so well foresee, 

But would not to appease him tell ; 

And in thy Silence was his Sentence, 

And in his Soul a vain repentance, 

And evil dread so ill dissembled 

That in his hand the lightnings trembled. 

Ill 

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind, 

To render with thy precepts less 

The sum of human wretchedness, 
And strengthen Man with his own mind ; 
But baffled as thou wert from high, 
Still in thy patient energy, 
In the endurance, and repulse 

Of thine impenetrable Spirit, 
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse, 

A mighty lesson we inherit : 



36 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Thou art a symbol and a sign 

To Mortals of their fate and force ; 
Like thee, Man is in part divine, 

A troubled stream from a pure source ; 
And Man in portions can foresee 

His own funereal destiny ; 
His wretchedness, and his resistance, 
And his sad unallied existence : 
To which his Spirit may oppose 
Itself — an equal to all woes — 

And a firm will, and a deep sense, 
Which even in torture can descry 

Its own concentered recompense, 
Triumphant where it dares defy, 
And making Death a Victory. 



WHEN WE TWO PARTED 

(Written between 1814 and 1816) 

I 

WHEN we two parted 
In silence and tears, 
Half broken-hearted 
To sever for years, 
Pale grew thy cheek and cold, 

Colder thy kiss ; 
Truly that hour foretold 
Sorrow to this. 

II 

The dew of the morning 
Sunk chill on my brow — 



WHEN WE TWO PARTED 37 

It felt like the warning 

Of what I feel now. 
Thy vows are all broken, 

And light is thy fame : 
I hear thy name spoken, 

And share in its shame. 

Ill 
They name thee before me, 

A knell to mine ear ; 
A shudder comes o'er me — 

Why wert thou so dear? 
They know not I knew thee, 

Who knew thee too well : — 
Long, long shall I rue thee, 

Too deeply to tell. 

IV 

In secret we met — 

In silence I grieve, 
That thy heart could forget, 

Thy spirit deceive. 
If I should meet thee 

After long years, 
How should I greet thee ? — 

With silence and tears. 



38 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

THE COLISEUM BY MOONLIGHT 

(From Manfred, Act III, Scene IV; written in Venice, April, 

1817) 

Scene IV. Interior of the tower 

Manfred alone 

TLIE stars are forth, the moon above the tops 
Of the snow-shining mountains. — Beautiful ! 
I linger yet with Nature, for the Night 
Hath been to me a more familiar face 
Than that of man ; and in her starry shade 
Of dim and solitary loveliness, 
I learned the language of another world. 
I do remember me, that in my youth, 
When I was wandering, — upon such a night 
I stood within the Coliseum's wall, i< 

'Midst the chief relics of almighty Rome ; 
The trees which grew along the broken arches 
Waved dark in the blue midnight, and the stars 
Shone through the rents of ruin ; from afar 
The watch-dog bayed beyond the Tiber ; and 
More near from out the Caesar's palace came 
The owl's long cry, and, interruptedly, 
Of distant sentinels the fitful song 
Begun and died upon the gentle wind. 
Some cypresses beyond the time-worn breach 2< 

Appeared to skirt the horizon, yet they stood 
Within a bowshot. Where the Caesars dwelt, 
And dwell the tuneless birds of night, amidst 
A grove which springs through levelled battlements, 
And twines its roots with the imperial hearths, 



TO THOMAS MOOKK 



39 



Ivy usurps the laurel's place of growth ; — 

But the gladiators' bloody Circus stands, 

A noble wreck in ruinous perfection, 

While Caesar's chambers, and the Augustan halls, 

Grovel on earth in indistinct decay. — 30 

And thou didst shine, thou rolling Moon, upon 

All this, and cast a wide and tender light, 

Which softened down the hoar austerity 

Of rugged desolation, and filled up, 

As 'twere anew, the gaps of centuries ; 

Leaving that beautiful which still was so, 

And making that which was not — till the place 

Became religion, and the heart ran o'er 

With silent worship of the Great of old, — 

The dead, but sceptred, Sovereigns, who still rule 40 

Our spirits from their urns. 



TO THOMAS MOORE 

(Written July, 1S17) 



MY boat is on the shore, 
And my bark is on the sea ; 
But, before I go, Tom Moore, 
Here 's a double health to thee ! 



II 



Here's a sigh to those who love me, 
And a smile to those who hate ; 

And, whatever sky 's above me, 
Here 's a heart for every fate. 



40 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

III 
Though the Ocean roar around me, 

Yet it still shall bear me on ; 
Though a desert should surround me, 

It hath springs that may be won. 

IV 
Were 't the last drop in the well, 

As I gasped upon the brink, 
Ere my fainting spirit fell, 

'Tis to thee that I would drink. 

V 
With that water, as this wine, 

The libation I would pour 
Should be — peace with thine and mine, 

And a health to thee, Tom Moore. 



SELECTIONS FROM CHILDE HAROLD 

Childe Harold is a series of descriptive, reflective, and lyrical 
Stanzas, strung together on a slender thread of narrative. It is di\ ided 
into four cantos, and is written in the nine-line stanza of Spenser's 
Faerie Queene, — a measure that, in Byron's hands, becomes an instru- 
ment of many strings. 

The impressions made upon the poet by his tour through Portugal, 
Spain, Albania, and Greece are recorded in the first two cantos 
of Childe Harold, which, when published in March, 1 1812, inspired 
Byron's oft-quoted remark, " I awoke one morning and found myself 
famous." Among much that is trivial and commonplace, certain 
stanzas in Cantos I and II rise into greatness. 

But there is a vast gulf fixed between the first two and the last two 
cantos of Childe Harold. Cantos III and IV, published in 18 16 and 
1818, respectively, first showed the w T orld the scope of Byron's genius. 
They form an imperishable contribution to literature. Their subject- 
matter is furnished by the scenery and historical associations of Bel- 
gium, the Rhine, Switzerland, and Italy. But Childe Harold is no mere 
versified notebook. Here Byron's passion for the grander aspects of 
nature — the mountains and the sea — finds its highest expression. 
The poem is even more than a series of brilliant scenic descriptions : 
it is, as the poet himself says, " a mark of respect for what is vener- 
able, and of feeling for what is glorious." Byron's sense of historic 
continuity and his vivid imagination bring the dead past to life again, 
with its art and literature, its great deeds and its mighty men, — '• The 
glory that was Greece, the grandeur that was Rome." 



GREECE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION OF 1821 

(From Canto II) 

Though Greece, enslaved by the Turks and rent by domestic dis- 
cord, showed at this period little capacity for self-government, she 
yet regained her independence as the result of the revolution begun 
in 182 1. Some twelve years after writing the present stanzas Byron 
was to offer up his own life upon the altar of Grecian freedom. 

1 Nicol, Byron (English Men of Letters), gives February 2<r. but Leslie 
Stephen, article "Byron," Dictionary of National Biography, gives March; 
and E. II. Coleridge, Poetical Works of Lord Byron (1 vol.). gives March 10. 

41 



42 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

II 

ANCIENT of days ! august Athena ! where, 
l Where are thy men of might ? thy grand in soul? 
Gone — glimmering through the dream of things that were : 
First in the race that led to Glory's goal, 
They won, and passed away — is this the whole? 
A schoolboy's tale, the wonder of an hour ! 
The Warrior's weapon and the Sophist's stole 
Are sought in vain, and o'er each mouldering tower, 
Dim with the mist of years, gray flits the shade of power. 

LXXIII 
Fair Greece ! sad relic of departed Worth ! 
Immortal, though no more ; though fallen, great ! 
Who now shall lead thy scattered children forth, 
And long- accustomed bondage uncreate? 
Not such thy sons who whilome did await, 
The hopeless warriors of a willing doom, 
In bleak Thermopylae's 1 sepulchral strait — 
Oh ! who that gallant spirit shall resume, 
Leap from Eurotas' 2 banks, and call thee from the tomb? 

LXXIV 

Spirit of Freedom ! when on Phyle's brow 
Thou sat' st with Thrasybulus 3 and his train, 
Could st thou forebode the dismal hour which now 
Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain? 

1 Thermopylae : a narrow pass on the eastern coast, through which ran the only 
road from northern to southern Greece. Here, in 480 B.C., Leonidas, the Spartan, 
with three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians, met the Persian army 
of Xerxes. Although the Greeks were slain to a man, " Thermopylae " has become 
a synonym for the most exalted patriotism. 

2 Eurotas : a river of Greece, on which Sparta was situated. 

3 Thrasybulus : an Athenian general and statesman who, in 403 B.C., by seiz- 
ing Phyle and the Piraeus, overthrew the Thirty Tyrants of Athens and restored 
the democracy. 



GREECE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION OF 1821 43 

Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain, 

But every carle l can lord it o'er thy land ; 

Sfor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain, 

Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand, 

From birth till death enslaved — in word, in deed, unmanned. 

LXXVI 

Hereditary Bondsmen ! know ye not 
Who would be free themselves must strike the blow? 
3y their right arms the conquest must be wrought? 
►Vill Gaul or Muscovite 2 redress ye ? No ! 
True — they may lay your proud despoilers low, 
But not for you will Freedom's Altars flame. 
Shades of the Helots ! 3 triumph o'er your foe ! 
Greece ! change thy lords, thy state is still the same ; 
Thy glorious day is o'er, but not thine years of shame. 

LXXXVII 

fet are thy skies as blue, thy crags as wild ; 
Sweet are thy groves, and verdant are thy fields, 
Thine olives ripe as when Minerva smiled, 
\nd still his honey'd wealth Hymettus 4 yields ; 
There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, 
The free-born wanderer of thy mountain air ; 
Apollo still thy long, long summer gilds, 
Still in his beam Mendeli's 5 marbles glare ; 
^rt, Glory, Freedom fail, but Nature still is fair. 

1 Carle : rustic, boor. 2 Gaul or Muscovite : Frenchman or Russian. 

3 Helots : a class of serfs among the ancient Spartans. They were owned by 
:he state, were cruelly treated, and sometimes massacred. Now, says Byron, 
n the present degraded state of Greece the shades of the Helots can triumph 
aver the descendants of their oppressors. 

4 Hymettus : the ancient name of a mountain southeast of Athens, celebrated 
for its honey. 

5 Mendeli : the modern name of Pentelicus, a mountain near Athens famous 
for its marble. 



44 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

LXXXVIII 
Where'er we tread 't is haunted, holy ground ; 
No earth of thine is lost in vulgar mould, 
But one vast realm of Wonder spreads around, 
And all the Muse's tales seem truly told, 
Till the sense aches with gazing to behold 
The scenes our earliest dreams have dwelt upon ; 
Each hill and dale, each deepening glen and wold 
Defies the power which crushed thy temples gone : 
Age shakes Athena's tower, 1 but spares gray Marathon. 5 

THE EVE BEFORE WATERLOO 

(From Canto III) 

On the night of June 15, 18 15, traditionally the "eve before 
Waterloo," the Duchess of Richmond gave a ball in Brussels, near 
which the English army was encamped. Wellington, though uncertain 
of Napoleon's movements, ordered his officers to attend the ball, in 
order to avert a panic among the townspeople. While " all went merry 
as a marriage bell" Napoleon approached the city. On the following 
day was fought the battle of Quatrebras ; two days later, Waterloo. 

XXI 

THERE was a sound of revelry by night, 
And Belgium's Capital had gathered then 
Her Beauty and her Chivalry — and bright 
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men ; 
A thousand hearts beat happily ; and when 
Music arose with its voluptuous swell, 
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again, 
And all went merry as a marriage bell ; 
But hush ! hark ! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell. 

1 Athena's tower : probably refers to the Parthenon at Athens. 

2 Marathon : a plain eighteen miles northeast of Athens, where, in 490 B.C., 
Miltiades, with eleven thousand Greeks, defeated a hundred thousand Persians, 
thus saving Europe from the " barbarians." 






THE EVE BEFORE WATERLOO 45 

XXII 

Did ye not hear it? — No — 'twas but the Wind, 

Or the car rattling o'er the stony street ; 

On with the dance ! let joy be uncon fined ; 

No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet 

To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet — 

But hark ! — that heavy sound breaks in once more, 

As if the clouds its echo would repeat ; 

And nearer — clearer — deadlier than before ! 

Arm 1 Arm ! it is — it is — the cannon's opening roar ! 

XXIV 

Ah ! then and there was hurrying to and fro — 
And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, 
And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago 
Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness — 
And there were sudden partings, such as press 
The life from out young hearts, and choking sighs 
Which ne'er might be repeated ; who could guess 
If ever more should meet those mutual eyes, 
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise ! 

XXV 

And there was mounting in hot haste — the steed, 
The mustering squadron, and the clattering car, 
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, 
And swiftly forming in the ranks of war — 
And the deep thunder peal on peal afar ; 
And near, the beat of the alarming drum 
Roused up the soldier ere the Morning Star ; 
While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, 
Or whispering, with white lips — "The foe! They come ! 
they come ! " 



46 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

THE RHINE 
(From Canto III) 



BUT Thou, exulting and abounding river ! 
Making thy waves a blessing as they flow 
Through banks whose beauty would endure for ever 
Could man but leave thy bright creation so, 
Nor its fair promise from the surface mow 
With the sharp scythe of conflict, — then to see 
Thy valley of sweet waters, were to know 
Earth paved like Heaven — and to seem such to me, 
Even now what wants thy stream ? — that it should Lethe * be. 

LIX 

Adieu to thee, fair Rhine ! How long delighted 
The stranger fain would linger on his way ! 
Thine is a scene alike where souls united, 
Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray ; 
And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey 
On self-condemning bosoms, it were here, 
Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay, 
Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, 
Is to the mellow Earth as Autumn to the year. 

LX 

Adieu to thee again ! a vain adieu ! 
There can be no farewell to scene like thine ; 
The mind is coloured by thy every hue ; 
And if reluctantly the eyes resign 

1 Lethe : in Greek mythology a river of the lower world, whose waters, when 
drunk by the souls, brought oblivion of all former existence. 






VENICE 47 

Their cherished gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine ! 

T is with the thankful glance of parting praise ; 

More mighty spots may rise — more glaring shine, 

But none unite, in one attaching maze, 

The brilliant, fair, and soft, — the glories of old days, 

LXI 

The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom 

Of coming ripeness, the white city's sheen, 

The rolling stream, the precipice's gloom, 

The forest's growth, and Gothic walls between, — 

The wild rocks shaped, as they had turrets been, 

In mockery of man's art ; and these withal 

A race of faces happy as the scene, 

Whose fertile bounties here extend to all, 

Still springing o'er thy banks, though Empires near them fall. 

VENICE 

(From Canto IV) 

These stanzas form what is perhaps the noblest of all poetical 
tributes to Venice, a city that has shared with Florence the especial 
love of great English poets. Compare Byron's more elaborate Ode 
on Venice, beginning, 

" Oh Venice! Venice! when thy marble walls 
Are level with the waters, there shall be 
A cry of nations o'er thy sunken halls, 
A loud lament along the sweeping sea!" 

I 

I STOOD in Venice, on the " Bridge of Sighs " ; 
A Palace and a Prison on each hand : 
I saw from out the wave her structures rise 
As from the stroke of the Enchanter's wand : 
A thousand Years their cloudy wings expand 






48 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Around me, and a dying Glory smiles 

O'er the far times, when many a subject land 

Looked to the winged Lion's marble piles, 

Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles ! 

II 

She looks a sea Cybele, 1 fresh from Ocean, 

Rising with her tiara of proud towers 

At airy distance, with majestic motion, 

A Ruler of the waters and their powers : 

And such she was ; — her daughters had their dowers 

From spoils of nations, and the exhaustless East 

Poured in her lap all gems in sparkling showers ; 

In purple was she robed, and of her feast 

Monarchs partook, and deemed their dignity increased. 

Ill 
In Venice Tasso's echoes 2 are no more, 
And silent rows the songless Gondolier ; 
Her palaces are crumbling to the shore, 
And Music meets not always now the ear : 
Those days are gone — but Beauty still is here. 
States fall — Arts fade — but Nature doth not die, 
Nor yet forget how Venice once was dear, 
The pleasant place of all festivity, 
The Revel of the earth — the Masque of Italy ! 

1 A sea Cybele: Cybele, originally an Asiatic goddess, was later identifiec 
with the Greek Rhea, mother of the gods. The source of social progress an 
civilization, she was also regarded as the founder of towns and cities, and fo 
this reason is represented in art as crowned with a diadem of towers. She trav 
elled riding on a lion or in a chariot drawn by lions. Byron's reference to Venic 
as a " sea Cybele " is hence peculiarly appropriate. Venice was a mother o 
civilization and the arts, wore a " tiara of proud towers," and had for her stanc 
ard the " winged Lion.' 

2 Tasso's echoes: in the clays when Venice was an independent state it i 
said that a favorite song of the gondoliers consisted of selections from Tasso' 
famous epic poem, Jerrtsalem Delivered, translated from the Tuscan into th 
Venetian dialect. 



T 



THE "CASCATA DEL MARMOKK" 49 

THE "CASCATA DEL MARMORE " 

(From Canto IV) 

The " Marble Cascade " is fifty-three miles northeast of Rome, 
near the city of Terni. It is formed by the Velino River, and falls 
six hundred and fifty feet. Byron says: "I saw the Cascata del 
Marmore of Terni twice, at different periods, — once from the sum- 
mit of the precipice, and again from the valley below. The lower 
view is far to be preferred, if the traveller has time for one only ; 
but in any point of view, either from above or below, it is worth all 
the cascades and torrents of Switzerland put together: the Staubach, 
Reichenbach, fall of Arpenaz, etc., are rills in comparative appear- 
ance. Of the fall of Schaffhausen I cannot speak, not yet having seen 
it." — Byron's note 

LXIX 

HE roar of waters ! — from the headlong height 

Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice ; 

The fall of waters ! rapid as the light 

The flashing mass foams, shaking the abyss ; 

The Hell of Waters ! where they howl and hiss, 

And boil in endless torture; while the sweat 

Of their great agony, wrung out from this 

Their Phlegethon, 1 curls round the rocks of jet 

That gird the gulf around, in pitiless horror set, 

LXX 

And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again 

Returns in an unceasing shower, which round, 

With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain, 

Is an eternal April to the ground, 

Making it all one emerald : — how profound 

The gulf ! and how the Giant Element 

From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound, 

Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent 

With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful vent 

1 Phlegethon: in Greek mythology, a river of lire in the lower world. 



50 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

LXXI 

To the broad column which rolls on, and shows 

More like the fountain of an infant sea 

Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes 

Of a new world, than only thus to be 

Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly, 

With many windings, through the vale : — Look back ! 

Lo ! where it comes like an Eternity, 

As if to sweep down all things in its track, 

Charming the eye with dread, — a matchless cataract, 

LXXII 

Horribly beautiful ! but on the verge, 

From side to side, beneath the glittering morn, 

An Iris x sits, amidst the infernal surge, 

Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn 

Its steady dyes, while all around is torn 

By the distracted waters, bears serene 

Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn : 

Resembling, mid the torture of the scene, 

Love watching Madness with unalterable mien. 

ROME 

(From Canto IV) 

" I have been some clays in Rome the Wonderful. I am delighted 
with Rome. As a whole — ancient and modern — it beats Greece, 
Constantinople, everything, — at least that I have ever seen. But 
I can't describe, because my first impressions are always strong and 
confused, and my memory selects and reduces them to order, like 
distance in the landscape, and blends them better, although they 
may be less distinct. I have been on horseback most of the day, 

1 Iris : not the flower, known as the flair de /ys, but the rainbow so charac- 
teristic of Alpine torrents and found by Byron at the Marble Cascade also. 



ROME 



51 



all clays since my arrival. I have been to Albano, its lakes, and to 
the top of the Alban Mount, and to Frascati, Aricia, etc. As for 
the Coliseum, Pantheon, etc., etc., they arc quite inconceivable, and 
must be seen." — ByrorCs Letters, May, iSiy 



LXXVIII 

OH, Rome ! my Country ! City of the Soul ! 
The orphans of the heart must turn to thee, 
Lone Mother of dead Empires ! and control 
In their shut breasts their petty misery. 
What are our woes and sufferance? Come and see 
The cypress — hear the owl — and plod your way 
O'er steps of broken thrones and temples — Ye ! 
Whose agonies are evils of a day — 
A world is at our feet as fragile as our clay. 

LXXIX 

The Niobe x of nations ! there she stands, 

Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe ; 

An empty urn within her withered hands, 

Whose holy dust was scattered long ago ; 

The Scipios' tomb 2 contains no ashes now ; 

The very sepulchres lie tenantless 

Of their heroic dwellers : dost thou flow, 

Old Tiber ! through a marble wilderness ? 

Rise, with thy yellow waves, and mantle her distress. 

1 Niobe : according to the Greek myth, the daughter of Tantalus and wife of 
Amphion. She had seven sons and seven daughters, whom she proclaimed to 
be superior to Apollo and Artemis, children of Leto. For this impiety the 
gods destroyed all her children. Niobe, through her grief, was turned to stone, 
but still wept eternally. Thus she has become the type of " voiceless woe." 

2 The Scipios' tomb : discovered in 1780 within the limits of the modern city 
of Rome. The Scipios formed one of the greatest families of Rome — the one 
above all others who made her mistress of the world. Byron perhaps means 
that Rome not only has no Scipios at the present day, but lias lost even the 
very traditions of patriotism. 



52 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

THE DYING GLADIATOR 
(From Canto IV) 

This scene, although suggested by the famous statue in the Capi 
toline Museum in Rome, is supposed to have taken place in the 
Coliseum. 

Gladiators were either voluntary or forced. The latter were largely 
recruited from the ranks of barbarian captives, one of whom forms 
the subject of the following stanzas. 

CXL 

I SEE before me the Gladiator lie : 
He leans upon his hand — his manly brow 
Consents to death, but conquers agony, 
And his drooped head sinks gradually low — 
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, 
Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now 
The arena swims around him — he is gone, 
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who 
won. 

CXLI 

He heard it, but he heeded not — his eyes 

Were with his heart — and that was far away ; 

He recked not of the life he lost nor prize, 

But where his rude hut by the Danube lay — ■ 

There were his young barbarians all at play, 

There was their Dacian * mother — he, their sire, 

Butchered to make a Roman holiday — 

All this rushed with his blood — Shall he expire 

And unavenged ? — Arise ! ye Goths, 2 and glut your ire ! 

1 Dacia : a region, on the north bank of the Danube, which supplied many o 
the gladiators for the Coliseum. 

2 Goths : under Alaric the Goths sacked Rome in 410 a.d. 



THE OCEAN 53 

THE OCEAN 

(From Canto IV) 

Byron's love of nature, though ardent and sincere, was reserved 
chiefly for her grander aspects. Both the mountains and the sea 
called to him with irresistible appeal, and both he celebrated in verse 
that fairly rises to the sublimity of his themes. The following stan- 
zas, though hackneyed, can never grow old, such is their glorious 
energy and power. 

CLXXVIII 

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore, 
There is society, where none intrudes, 
By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar : 
I love not Man the less, but Nature more, 
From these our interviews, in which I steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 
To mingle with the Universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express — yet cannot all conceal. 

CLXXIX 

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean — roll ! 

Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; 

Man marks the earth with ruin — his control 

Stops with the shore ; — upon the watery plain 

The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 

A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, 

When, for a moment, like a drop of rain, 

He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan — 

Without a grave — unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown. 

CLXXXI 

The armaments which thunderstrike the walls 
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, 



54 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

And Monarchs tremble in their Capitals ; 
The oak Leviathans, whose huge ribs make 
Their clay creator the vain title take 
Of Lord of thee, and Arbiter of War — 
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, 
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar 
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar. 1 

CLXXXII 

Thy shores are empires, changed in all save thee — 
Assyria — Greece — Rome — Carthage — what are they ? 
Thy waters washed them power while they were free, 
And many a tyrant since ; their shores obey 
The stranger, slave, or savage ; their decay 
Has dried up realms to deserts : — not so thou, 
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' play ; 

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow 

Such as Creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now. 

CLXXXIII 
Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form 
Glasses itself in tempests ; in all time, 

Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or storm 

Icing the Pole, or in the torrid clime 

Dark-heaving — boundless, endless, and sublime — 

The image of Eternity — the throne 

Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime 

The monsters of the deep are made — each Zone 

Obeys thee — thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone. 

1 Armada, Trafalgar: two of the most decisive naval events in history. The 
Spanish fleet, known as the " Armada," was met and partly destroyed by the 
English in 1588. Terrible storms completed the destruction. The battle of 
Trafalgar, in which the English, under Lord Nelson, won a famous victory over 
the French fleet, under Admiral Villeneuve, was fought in 1805 near the coast 
of Spain, off Cape Trafalgar. 



MAZEPPA 55 

CLXXXIV 

And I have loved thee, Ocean ! and my joy 
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be 
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward : from a boy 
I wantoned with thy breakers — they to me 
Were a delight ; and if the freshening sea 
Made them a terror — 'twas a pleasing fear, 
For I was as it were a Child of thee, 
And trusted to thy billows far and near, 
And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do here. 



MAZEPPA 

In Mazeppa, which he wrote at Venice in 181S, Byron reverts to 
the meter of his earlier romances and of The Prisoner of Chilian. 
The incident of Mazeppa's ride is historical, though of course trans- 
figured by the poet's imagination. 

The Ukraine (Borderland) was a name formerly applied to a district 
of uncertain boundaries, forming part of the old kingdom of Poland, 
but now belonging entirely to Russia. The inhabitants were Cossacks, 
a mixed race with Polish, Russian, and Tartar blood in their veins. 
Wild and free, they lived in the saddle and were engaged in constant 
warfare. They w T ere organized into a government by the king of 
Poland in the sixteenth century; but, to escape oppression, less than 
a century later they revolted to Russia. 

This brings us down to the time of Mazeppa, a famous " hetman," 
or chief of the Cossacks, who was born somewhere in the Ukraine, 
the exact place of his birth being a matter of dispute, as is the time, 
which is variously stated as 1640 and as 1644. Mazeppa was educated 
as a page at the court of John Casimir, king of Poland. Here 
occurred the romantic incident that Byron has taken as the basis of 
his narrative. Having been detected in an intrigue with a Polish lady 
of high rank, Mazeppa was bound naked to the back of a wild Tartar 
horse, who fled with him into the wilderness — the Ukraine; whether 
to Mazeppa's own home, as some assert, or to the native haunts of the 
horse, as others say, does not greatly affect the romance of the story. 

Mazeppa remained among the Cossacks of the Ukraine, and in 
1687 became their chief. Although subsequently made Prince of the 
Ukraine by Peter the Creat, he desired independence of Russia, and 



56 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

so conspired with Charles the Twelfth of Sweden, with whom he 
was defeated at Pultowa. After Pultowa he accompanied Charles to 
Bender, and there died, the same or the following year. 

Mazeppa's story has been a favorite theme for writers. The Russian 
novelist Bulgarin used it in a novel, and the Russian poet Pushkin 
made Mazeppa the hero of his drama, Poltava. But Byron's spirited 
narrative is the most celebrated treatment of the subject. The poet 
doubtless gained his historic facts from the Histoire de Charles XII 
by Voltaire, whose brief and matter-of-fact account is quoted in the 
"Advertisement" prefixed to the original edition of Mazeppa, 1819. 
Even the mere setting of Byron's poem is significant and suggestive : 
after the great defeat the old Hetman, pursued and fleeing, yet bold 
and dauntless as ever, tells to the despairing and wounded king of 
Sweden the wild and romantic story of his youth. The rush of the 
terrible ride through the forests and over the plains, Mazeppa's abso- 
lute helplessness, his hot anger and fruitless scorn, his torture by cold 
and thirst, his peril from the wolves, his passage of the river, form 
the main elements of a story that perhaps only Byron could have told 
with such breathless energy and graphic power. 



J ^T^ WAS after dread Pultowa' s * day, 

JL When fortune left the royal Swede — 
Around a slaughtered army lay, 

No more to combat and to bleed. 
The power and glory of the war, 

Faithless as their vain votaries, men, 
Had passed to the triumphant Czar, 

And Moscow's walls were safe again — 
Until a day more dark and drear 

And a more memorable year, 10 

Should give to slaughter and to shame 
A mightier host and haughtier name ; 
A greater wreck, a deeper fall, 
A shock to one — a thunderbolt to all. 2 

1 Pultowa: a city in southwestern Russia, near which Peter the Great won a 
famous victory over Charles the Twelfth, on July 8, 1709. This battle marked 
the beginning of Charles's downward career and the rise of Russia. 

2 Napoleon began his retreat from Moscow on October 19, 1812. 



MAZEPPA 57 

II 

Such was the hazard of the die ; 

The wounded Charles ] was taught to fly 

By day and night through field and flood, 

Stained with his own and subjects' blood ; 

For thousands fell that flight to aid : 

And not a voice was heard to upbraid 20 

Ambition in his humbled hour, 

When Truth had nought to dread from Power. 

His horse was slain, and Gieta. 12 gave 

His own — and died the Russians' slave. 

This, too, sinks after many a league 

Of well-sustained but vain fatigue ; 

And in the depth of forests darkling 

The watch-fires in the distance sparkling — 

The beacons of surrounding foes — 
A king must lay his limbs at length. 30 

Are these the laurels and repose 
For which the nations strain their strength? 
They laid him by a savage tree, 
In outworn Nature's agony ; 
His wounds were stiff, his limits were stark ; 
The heavy hour was chill and dark ; 
The fever in his blood forbade 
A transient slumber's fitful aid : 
And thus it was ; but yet through all, 
Kinglike the Monarch bore his fall, 4° 

And made, in this extreme of ill, 
His pangs the vassals of his will : 
All silent and subdued were they, 
As once the nations round him lay. 

1 Charles had been wounded in the foot ten days before the battle of Pultowa. 

2 Gieta : a Swedish officer. 



. 



58 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

III 

A band of chiefs ! — alas ! how few, 

Since but the fleeting of a day 
Had thinned it ; but this wreck was true 

And chivalrous : upon the clay 
Each sate him down, all sad and mute, 

Beside his monarch and his steed ; 
For danger levels man and brute, 

And all are fellows in their need. 
Among the rest, Mazeppa made 
His pillow in an old oak's shade — 
Himself as rough, and scarce less old, 
The Ukraine's Hetman, calm and bold ; 
But first, outspent with this long course, 
The Cossack prince rubbed down his horse, 
And made for him a leafy bed, 

And smoothed his fetlocks and his mane, 60 

And slacked his girth, and stripped his rein, 
And joyed to see how well he fed ; 
For until now he had the dread 
His wearied courser might refuse 
To browse beneath the midnight dews : 
But he was hardy as his lord, 
And little cared for bed and board ; 
But spirited and docile too, 
Whate'er was to be done, would do. 
Shaggy and swift, and strong of limb, 70 

All Tartar-like he carried him ; 
Obeyed his voice, and came to call, 
And knew him in the midst of all : 
Though thousands were around, — and Night, 
Without a star, pursued her flight, — 
That steed from sunset until dawn 
His chief would follow like a fawn. 



MAZEPPA 59 

IV 

This done, Mazeppa spread his cloak, 

And laid his lance beneath his oak, 

Felt if his arms in order good So 

The long day's march had well withstood — 

If still the powder filled the pan, 

And flints unloosened kept their lock — 

His sabre's hilt and scabbard felt, 

And whether they had chafed his belt ; 

And next the venerable man, 

From out his havresack and can, 

Prepared and spread his slender stock ; 
And to the Monarch and his men 
The whole or portion offered then 90 

With far less of inquietude 
Than courtiers at a banquet would. 
And Charles of this his slender share 
With smiles partook a moment there, 
To force of cheer a greater show, 
And seem above both wounds and woe ; — 
And then he said : " Of all our band, 
Though firm of heart and strong of hand, 
In skirmish, march, or forage, none 
Can less have said or more have done 100 

Than thee, Mazeppa ! On the earth 
So fit a pair had never birth, 
Since Alexander's days till now, 
As thy Bucephalus l and thou : 
All Scythia's 2 fame to thine should yield 
For pricking 3 on o'er flood and field." 

1 Bucephalus : a favorite horse of Alexander the Great. 

2 Scythia : an ill-defined region of western Asia and southeastern Europe, 
regarded by the Romans as the home of the best horsemen in the world. 

3 Pricking : spurring. 



60 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Mazeppa answered, " 111 betide 

The school wherein I learned to ride ! " 

Quoth Charles, " Old Hetman, wherefore so, 

Since thou hast learned the art so well? " 

Mazeppa said, " 'T were long to tell ; 

And we have many a league to go, 

With every now and then a blow, 

And ten to one at least the foe, 

Before our steeds may graze at ease, 

Beyond the swift Borysthenes : x 

And, Sire, your limbs have need of rest, 

And I will be the sentinel 

Of this your troop." — "But I request," 

Said Sweden's monarch, " thou wilt tell 

This tale of thine, and I may reap, 

Perchance, from this the boon of sleep ; 

For at this moment from my eyes 

The hope of present slumber flies." 

" Well, Sire, with such a hope, I '11 track 

My seventy years of memory back : 

I think 't was in my twentieth spring, — 

Ay, 'twas, — when Casimir was king — 

John Casimir, 2 — I was his page 

Six summers, in my earlier age : 1 30 

A learned monarch, faith ! was he, 

And most unlike your majesty ; 

He made no wars, and did not gain 

New realms to lose them back again ; 

And (save debates in Warsaw's diet) 

1 Borysthenes : the Dnieper. 

2 John Casimir : king of Poland from 1648 to 1668. He did, in fact, make war, 
but was always rather more of a monk than of a king. After an unsuccessful 
reign he abdicated in 1668 and died in France in 1672. 



MAZEPPA 61 

He reigned in most unseemly quiet ; 

Not that he had no cares to vex ; 

He loved the muses and the Sex ; 

And sometimes these so froward are, 

They made him wish himself at war ; 140 

But soon his wrath being o'er, he took 

Another mistress, or new book : 

And then he gave prodigious fetes — 

All Warsaw gathered round his gates 

To gaze upon his splendid court, 

And dames and chiefs, of princely port. 

He was the Polish Solomon, 

So sung his poets, all but one, 

Who, being unpensioned, made a satire, 

And boasted that he could not flatter. 150 

It was a court of jousts and mimes, 

Where every courtier tried at rhymes ; 

Even I for once produced some verses, 

And signed my odes ' Despairing Thyrsis.' 

There was a certain Palatine, 1 

A count of far and high descent, 
Rich as a salt or silver mine ; 2 
And he was proud, ye may divine, 

As if from heaven he had been sent : 
He had such wealth in blood and ore 160 

As few could match beneath the throne ; 
And he would gaze upon his store, 
And o'er his pedigree would pore, 

1 Palatine: a term of varied significance ; but Byron probably means either 

a nobleman of high rank, charged with certain duties at court, or one endowed 
by the sovereign with privileges and judicial prerogatives inferior only to those 
of the king himself. 

2 Rich as a salt mine : a pardonable comparison, when it is remembered that 
the wealth of the region once known as Poland lies largely in its salt mines. 



62 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Until by some confusion led, 

Which almost looked like want of head, 

He thought their merits were his own. 
His wife was not of this opinion ; 

His junior she by thirty years, 
Grew daily tired of his dominion ; 

And, after wishes, hopes, and fears, 17c 

To virtue a few farewell tears, 
A restless dream or two, some glances 
At Warsaw's youth, some songs, and dances 
Awaited but the usual chances, 
Those happy accidents which render 
The coldest dames so very tender, 
To deck her Count with titles given, 
'T is said, as passports into Heaven ; 
But, strange to say, they rarely boast 
Of these, who have deserved them most. 180 



" I was a goodly stripling then ; 

At seventy years I so may say, 
That there were few, or boys, or men, 

Who, in my dawning time of day, 
Of vassal or of knight's degree, 
Could vie in vanities with me ; 
For I had strength — youth — gaiety, 
A port, not like to this ye see, 
But smooth, as all is rugged now ; 

For Time, and Care, and War, have ploughed 190 
My very soul from out my brow ; 

And thus I should be disavowed 
By all my kind and kin, could they 
Compare my day and yesterday : 



MAZEPPA 

This change was wrought, too, long ere age 
Had ta'en my features for his page : 
With years, ye know, have not declined 
My strength — my courage — or my mind, 
Or at this hour I should not be 
Telling old tales beneath a tree, 
With starless skies my canopy. 

But let me on : Theresa's form — 
Methinks it glides before me now, 
Between me and yon chestnut's bough, 

The memory is so quick and warm ; 
And yet I find no words to tell 
The shape of her I loved so well : 
She had the Asiatic eye, 

Such as our Turkish neighbourhood 

Hath mingled with our Polish blood, 
Dark as above us is the sky ; 
But through it stole a tender light, 
Like the first moonrise of midnight ; 
Large, dark, and swimming in the stream, 
Which seemed to melt to its own beam ; 
All love, half languor, and half fire, 
Like saints that at the stake expire, 
And lift their raptured looks on high, 
As though it were a joy to die. 
A brow like a midsummer lake, 

Transparent with the sun therein, 
When waves no murmur dare to make, 

And Heaven beholds her face within. 
A cheek and lip — but why proceed? 

I loved her then, I love her still ; 
And such as I am, love indeed 

In fierce extremes — in good and ill. 



C3 



SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

But still we love even in our rage, 

And haunted to our very age 

With the vain shadow of the past, — 230 

As is Mazeppa to the last. 

VI 

" We met — we gazed — I saw, and sighed ; 

She did not speak, and yet replied ; 

There are ten thousand tones and signs 

We hear and see, but none defines — 

Involuntary sparks of thought, 

Which strike from out the heart o'erwrought, 

And form a strange intelligence, 

Alike mysterious and intense, 

Which link the burning chain that binds, 240 

Without their will, young hearts and minds ; 

Conveying, as the electric wire, 

We know not how, the absorbing fire. 

I saw, and sighed — in silence wept, 

And still reluctant distance kept, 

Until I was made known to her, 

And we might then and there confer 

Without suspicion — then, even then, 

I longed, and was resolved to speak ; 
But on my lips they died again, 250 

The accents tremulous and weak, 
Until one hour. — There is a game, 

A frivolous and foolish play, 

Wherewith we while away the day ; 
It is — I have forgot the name — 
And we to this, it seems, were set, 
By some strange chance, which I forget : 
I recked not if I won or lost, 



MAZEPPA 65 

It was enough for me to be 

So near to hear, and oh ! to see 260 

The being whom I loved the most. 
I watched her as a sentinel, 
(May ours this dark night watch as well !) 

Until I saw, and thus it was, 
That she was pensive, nor perceived 
Her occupation, nor was grieved 
Nor glad to lose or gain ; but still 
Played on for hours, as if her will 
Yet bound her to the place, though not 
That hers might be the winning lot. 270 

Then through my brain the thought did pass, 
Even as a flash of lightning there, 
That there was something in her air 
Which would not doom me to despair ; 
And on the thought my words broke forth, 

All incoherent as they were ; 
Their eloquence was little worth, 
But yet she listened — 't is enough — 

Who listens once will listen twice ; 

Her heart, be sure, is not of ice — 280 

And one refusal no rebuff. 

VII 

" I loved, and was beloved again — 

They tell me, Sire, you never knew 

Those gentle frailties ; if 't is true, 
I shorten all my joy or pain ; 
To you 't would seem absurd as vain ; 
But all men are not born to reign, 
Or o'er their passions, or as you 
Thus o'er themselves and nations too. 



66 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

I am — or rather was — a Prince, 
A chief of thousands, and could lead 
Them on where each would foremost bleed 
But could not o'er myself evince 
The like control. — But to resume : 
I loved, and was beloved again ; 
In sooth, it is a happy doom, 

But yet Where happiest ends in pain. 
We met in secret, and the hour 
Which led me to that lady's bower 
Was fiery Expectation's dower. 
My days and nights were nothing — all 
Except that hour which doth recall, 
In the long lapse from youth to age, 
No other like itself : I 'd give 
The Ukraine back again to live 
It o'er once more, and be a page, 
The happy page, who was the lord 
Of one soft heart, and his own sword, 
And had no other gem nor wealth, 
Save Nature's gift of Youth and Health. 
We met in secret — doubly sweet, 
Some say, they find it so to meet ; 
X know not that — I would have given 
My life but to have called her mine 
In the full view of Earth and Heaven ; 

For I did oft and long repine 
That we could only meet by stealth. 

VIII 

" For lovers there are many eyes, 

And such there were on us ; the Devil 
On such occasions should be civil — 



MAZEP1W 67 

The Devil ! — I 'm loth to do him wrong, 

It might be some untoward saint, 
Who would not be at rest too long, 

But to his pious bile gave vent — 
But one fair night, some lurking spies 
Surprised and seized us both. 
The Count was something more than wroth — 
I was unarmed ; but if in steel, 
All cap- a-pie from head to heel, 
What 'gainst their numbers could I do? 330 

T was near his castle, far away 

From city or from succour near, 
And almost on the break of day ; 
I did not think to see another, 

My moments seemed reduced to few ; 
And with one prayer to Mary Mother, 

And, it may be, a saint or two, 
As I resigned me to my fate, 
They led me to the castle gate : 

Theresa's doom I never knew, 340 

Our lot was henceforth separate. 
An angry man, ye may opine, 
Was he, the proud Count Palatine ; 
And he had reason good to be, 

But he was most enraged lest such 

An accident should chance to touch 
Upon his future pedigree ; 
Nor less amazed, that such a blot 
His noble 'scutcheon should have got, 
While he was highest of his line ; 35© 

Because unto himself he seemed 

The first of men, nor less he deemed 
In others' eyes, and most in mine. 



68 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

'Sdeath ! with a page — perchance a king 
Had reconciled him to the thing ; 
But with a stripling of a page — 
I felt — but cannot paint his rage. 

IX 

" ' Bring forth the horse ! ' — the horse was brought ! 
In truth, he was a noble steed, 

A Tartar of the Ukraine breed, 360 

Who looked as though the speed of thought 
Were in his limbs ; but he was wild, 

Wild as the wild deer, and untaught, 
With spur and bridle undefiled — 

'T was but a day he had been caught ; 
And snorting, with erected mane, 
And struggling fiercely, but in vain, 
In the full foam of wrath and dread 
To me the desert-born was led : 

They bound me on, that menial throng, 370 

Upon his back with many a thong ; 
They loosed him with a sudden lash — 
Away ! — away — and on we dash ! — 
Torrents less rapid and less rash. 

X 

" Away ! — away ! — My breath was gone, 

I saw not where he hurried on : 

'T was scarcely yet the break of day, 

And on he foamed — away ! — away ! 

The last of human sounds which rose, 

As I was darted from my foes, 380 

Was the wild shout of savage laughter, 

Which on the wind came roaring after 



MAZEPPA 69 

A moment from that rabble rout : 

With sudden wrath I wrenched my head, 

And snapped the cord, which to the mane 

Had bound my neck in lieu of rein, 
And, writhing half my form about, 
Howled back my curse ; but 'midst the tread, 
The thunder of my courser's speed, 
Perchance they did not hear nor heed : 390 

It vexes me — for I would fain 
Have paid their insult back again. 
I paid it well in after days : 
There is not of that castle gate, 
Its drawbridge and portcullis' weight, 
Stone — bar — moat — bridge — or barrier left ; 
Nor of its fields a blade of grass, 

Save what grows on a ridge of wall, 

Where stood the hearth-stone of the hall ; 
And many a time ye there might pass, 400 

Nor dream that e'er the fortress was. 
I saw its turrets in a blaze, 
Their crackling battlements all cleft, 

And the hot lead pour down like rain 
From off the scorched and blackening roof 
Whose thickness was not vengeance-proof. 

They little thought that day of pain, 
W 7 hen launched, as on the lightning's flash, 
They bade me to destruction dash, 

That one day I should come again, . 410 

W^ith twice five thousand horse, to thank 

The Count for his uncourteous ride. 
They played me then a bitter prank, 

When, with the wild horse for my guide, 
They bound me to his foaming flank : 



yo SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

At length I played them one as frank — 

For Time at last sets all things even — 
And if we do but watch the hour, 
There never yet was human power 

Which could evade, if unforgiven, 420 

The patient search and vigil long 

Of him who treasures up a wrong. 

XI 

" Away, away, my steed and I, 
Upon the pinions of the wind. 

All human dwellings left behind, 
We sped like meteors through the sky, 
When with its crackling sound the night 
Is chequered with the Northern light. 
Town — village — none were on our track, 

But a wild plain of far extent, 43c 

And bounded by a forest black ; 

And, save the scarce seen battlement 
On distant heights of some stronghold, 
Against the Tartars x built of old, 
No trace of man. The year before, 
A Turkish army had marched o'er ; 
And where the S*pahi's 2 hoof hath trod, 
The verdure flies the bloody sod : 
The sky was dull, and dim, and gray, 

1 Tartar : the Tartars, or Tatars, were originally the Mongolian tribes o 
eastern Asia. Afterwards the term was used in a vague sense to include the 
various Asiatic tribes and races led into Europe by Genghis Khan about 1225 
a.d. In a more restricted sense, the " Tartars " were certain tribes, largely of 
Turkish race, who lived in Siberia and central and southeastern Russia, and 
made inroads upon the Russians and Poles. Hence the " strongholds " along 
the Polish frontier. Byron may here refer either to the Tartar incursions of 
Genghis Khan or to the predatory inroads of the " Tartar " tribes of southeastern 
Russia. 2 Spahi: a Turkish cavalryman. 



MAZEPPA J l 

And a low breeze crept moaning by — 4A° 

I could have answered with a sigh — 
But fast we fled — away ! away ! — 
And I could neither sigh nor pray ; 
And my cold sweat-drops fell like rain 
Upon the courser's bristling mane ; 
But, snorting still with rage and fear, 
He flew upon his far career : 
At times I almost thought, indeed, 
He must have slackened in his speed ; 
But no — my bound and slender frame 45° 

Was nothing to his angry might, 
And merely like a spur became : 
Each motion which I made to free 
My swoln limbs from their agony 

Increased his fury and affright : 
I tried my voice, — 'twas faint and low — 
But yet he swerved as from a blow ; 
And, starting to each accent, sprang 
As from a sudden trumpet's clang : 
Meantime my cords were wet with gore, 460 

Which, oozing through my limbs, ran o'er ; 
And in my tongue the thirst became 
A something fierier far than flame. 

XII 
" We neared the wild wood — 'twas so wide, 
I saw no bounds on either side : 
'Twas studded with old sturdy trees, 
That bent not to the roughest breeze 
Which howls down from Siberia's waste, 
And strips the forest in its haste, — 
But these were few and far between, 470 



SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Set thick with shrubs more young and green, 

Luxuriant with their annual leaves, 

Ere strown by those autumnal eves 

That nip the forest's foliage dead, 

Discolored with a lifeless red, 

Which stands thereon like stiffened gore 

Upon the slain when battle 's o'er ; 

And some long winter's night hath shed 

Its frosts o'er every tombless head — 

So cold and stark, the raven's beak 

May peck unpierced each frozen cheek : 

'T was a wild waste of underwood, 

And here and there a chestnut stood, 

The strong oak, and the hardy pine ; 

But far apart — and well it were, 
Or else a different lot were mine : 

The boughs gave way, and did not tear 
My limbs ; and I found strength to bear 
My wounds, already scarred with cold ; 
My bonds forbade to loose my hold. 
We rustled through the leaves like wind, — 
Left shrubs, and trees, and wolves behind ; 
By night I heard them on the track, 
Their troop came hard upon our back, 
With their long gallop, which can tire 
The hound's deep hate, and hunter's fire : 
Where'er we flew they followed on, 
Nor left us with the morning sun ; 
Behind I saw them, scarce a rood, 
At daybreak winding through the wood, 
And through the night had heard their feet 
Their stealing, rustling step repeat. 
Oh ! how I wished for spear or sword, 



MAZEPPA 



73 



At least to die amidst the horde, 

And perish — if it must be so — 

At bay, destroying many a foe ! 

When first my courser's race begun, 

I wished the goal already won ; 

But now I doubted strength and speed : 

Vain doubt ! his swift and savage breed 510 

Had nerved him like the mountain-roe — 

Nor faster falls the blinding snow 

Which whelms the peasant near the door 

Whose threshold he shall cross no more, 

Bewildered with the dazzling blast, 

Than through the forest-paths he passed — 

Untired, untamed, and worse than wild — 

All furious as a favored child 

Balked of its wish ; or — fiercer still — 

A woman piqued — who has her will ! S 2 ° 

XIII 

"The wood was passed ; 'twas more than noon, 

But chill the air, although in June ; 

Or it might be my veins ran cold — 

Prolonged endurance tames the bold ; 

And I was then not what I seem, 

But headlong as a wintry stream, 

And wore my feelings out before 

I well could count their causes o'er : 

And what with fury, fear, and wrath, 

The tortures which beset my path — 530 

Cold — hunger — sorrow — shame — distress — 

Thus bound in Nature's nakedness ; 

Sprung from a race whose rising blood 

When stirred beyond its calmer mood, 



74 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

And trodden hard upon, is like 

The rattle-snake's, in act to strike — 

What marvel if this worn-out trunk 

Beneath its woes a moment sunk ? 

The earth gave way, the skies rolled round, 

I seemed to sink upon the ground ; 

But erred — for I was fastly bound. 

My heart turned sick, my brain grew sore, 

And throbbed awhile, then beat no more : 

The skies spun like a mighty wheel ; 

I saw the trees like drunkards reel, 

And a slight flash sprang o'er my eyes, 

Which saw no farther. He who dies 

Can die no more than then I died, 

O'ertortured by that ghastly ride. 

I felt the blackness come and go, 

And strove to wake ; but could not make 
My senses climb up from below : 
I felt as on a plank at sea, 
When all the waves that dash o'er thee, 
At the same time upheave and whelm, 
And hurl thee towards a desert realm. 
My undulating life was as 
The fancied lights that flitting pass 
Our shut eyes in deep midnight, when 
Fever begins upon the brain ; s6 , 

But soon it passed, with little pain, 
But a confusion worse than such : 
I own that I should deem it much, 
Dying, to feel the same again ; 
And yet I do suppose we must 
Feel far more e'er we turn to dust ! 
No matter ! I have bared my brow 
Full in Death's face — before — and now. 



54o 



55o 



MAZEPPA 



XIV 



75 



" My thoughts came back. Where was I? Cold, 
And numb, and giddy : pulse by pulse 570 

Life reassumed its lingering hold, 

And throb by throb, — till grown a pang 
Which for a moment would convulse, 
My blood reflowed, though thick and chill ; 

My ear with uncouth noises rang, 
My heart began once more to thrill ; 

My sight returned, though dim ; alas ! 

And thickened, as it were, with glass. 

Methought the dash of waves was nigh ; 

There was a gleam too of the sky, 580 

Studded with stars ; — it is no dream ; 

The wild horse swims the wilder stream ! 

The bright broad river's gushing tide 

Sweeps, winding onward, far and wide, 

And we are half-way, struggling o'er 

To yon unknown and silent shore. 

The waters broke my hollow trance, 

And with a temporary strength 

My stiffened limbs were rebaptized. 

My courser's broad breast proudly braves, 590 

And dashes off the ascending waves, 

And onward we advance ! 

We reach the slippery shore at length, 
A haven I but little prized, 

For all behind was dark and drear, 

And all before was night and fear. 

How many hours of night or day 

In those suspended pangs I lay, 

I could not tell ; I scarcely knew 

If this were human breath I drew. 600 



;6 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

XV 

" With glossy skin, and dripping mane, 

And reeling limbs, and reeking flank, 
The wild steed's sinewy nerves still strain 

Up the repelling bank. 
We gain the top : a boundless plain 
Spreads through the shadow of the night, 

And onward, onward, onward — seems, 

Like precipices in our dreams, 
To stretch beyond the sight ; 
And here and there a speck of white, 610 

Or scattered spot of dusky green, 
In masses broke into the light, 
As rose the moon upon my right : 

But nought distinctly seen 
In the dim waste would indicate 
The omen of a cottage gate ; 
No twinkling taper from afar 
Stood like a hospitable star ; 
Not even an ignis-fatuus rose 
To make him merry with my woes : 620 

That very cheat had cheered me then ! 
Although detected, welcome still, 
Reminding me, through every ill, 

Of the abodes of men. 

XVI 

" Onward we went — but slack and slow ; 

His savage force at length o'erspent, 
The drooping courser, faint and low, 

All feebly foaming went : 
A sickly infant had had power 
To guide him forward in that hour ! 630 



MAZEPPA 77 

But, useless all to me, 
His new-born tameness nought availed — 
My limbs were bound ; my force had failed, 

Perchance, had they been free. 
With feeble effort still I tried 
To rend the bonds so starkly tied, 

But still it was in vain ; 
My limbs were only wrung the more, 
And soon the idle strife gave o'er, 

Which but prolonged their pain. 640 

The dizzy race seemed almost done, 
Although no goal was nearly won : 
Some streaks announced the coming sun — 

How slow, alas ! he came ! 
Methought that mist of dawning gray 
Would never dapple into day ; 
How heavily it rolled away ! 

Before the eastern flame 
Rose crimson, and deposed the stars, 
And called the radiance from their cars, 650 

And filled the earth, from his deep throne, 
With lonely lustre, all his own. 

XVII 

" Uprose the sun ; the mists were curled 

Back from the solitary world 

Which lay around — behind — before. 

What booted it to traverse o'er 

Plain — forest — river ? Man nor brute, 

Nor dint of hoof, nor print of foot, 

Lay in the wild luxuriant soil — 

No sign of travel, none of toil — 660 

The very air was mute : 



7% SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

And not an insect's shrill small horn, 

Nor matin bird's new voice was borne 

From herb nor thicket. Many a werst, 1 

Panting as if his heart would burst, 

The weary brute still staggered on ; 

And still we were — or seemed — alone : 

At length, while reeling on our way, 

Methought I heard a courser neigh 

From out yon tuft of blackening firs. 6; 

Is it the wind those branches stirs ? 

No, no ! from out the forest prance 
A trampling troop ; I see them come ! 

In one vast squadron they advance ! 

I strove to cry — my lips were dumb ! 
The steeds rush on in plunging pride ; 
But where are they the reins to guide? 
A thousand horse, and none to ride ! 
With flowing tail, and flying mane, 
Wide nostrils never stretched by pain, C8« 

Mouths bloodless to the bit or rein, 
And feet that iron never shod, 
And flanks unscarred by spur or rod, 
A thousand horse, the wild, the free, 
Like waves that follow o'er the sea, 

Came thickly thundering on, 
As if our faint approach to meet ! 
The sight re-nerved my courser's feet, 
A moment staggering, feebly fleet, 
A moment, with a faint low neigh, 690 

He answered, and then fell ! 
With gasps and glazing eyes he lay, 
And reeking limbs immoveable, 

Werst : a Russian measure equivalent to about three fifths of an English mile. 



MAZEPPA 79 

His first and last career is done ! 
On came the troop — they saw him stoop, 

They saw me strangely bound along 

His back with many a bloody thong. 
They stop — they start — they snuff the air, 
Gallop a moment here and there, 

Approach, retire, wheel round and round, 700 

Then plunging back with sudden bound, 
Headed by one black mighty steed, 
Who seemed the Patriarch of his breed, 

Without a single speck or hair 
Of white upon his shaggy hide ; 

They snort — they foam — neigh — they swerve aside 
And backward to the forest fly, 
By instinct, from a human eye. 

They left me there to my despair, 
Linked to the dead and stiffening wretch, 710 

Whose lifeless limbs beneath me stretch, 
Relieved from that unwonted weight, 
From whence I could not extricate 
Nor him nor me — and there we lay, 

The dying on the dead ! 
I little deemed another day 

Would see my houseless, helpless head. 

" And there from morn till twilight bound, 

I felt the heavy hours toil round, 

With just enough of life to see 720 

My last of suns go down on me, 

In hopeless certainty of mind, 

That makes us feel at length resigned 

To that which our foreboding years 

Presents the worst and last of fears : 



8o SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

Inevitable — even a boon, 
Nor more unkind for coming soon, 
Yet shunned and dreaded with such care, 
. As if it only were a snare 

That Prudence might escape : 730 

At times both wished for and implored, 
At times sought with self-pointed sword, 
Yet still a dark and hideous close 
To even intolerable woes, 

And welcome in no shape. 
And, strange to say, the sons of pleasure, 
They who have revelled beyond measure 
In beauty, wassail, wine, and treasure, 
Die calm, or calmer, oft than he 
Whose heritage was Misery : 740 

For he who hath in turn run through 
All that was beautiful and new, 

Hath nought to hope, and nought to leave ; 
And, save the future (which is viewed 
Not quite as men are base or good, 
But as their nerves may be endued), 

With nought perhaps to grieve : 
The wretch still hopes his woes must end, 
And Death, whom he should deem his friend, s 
Appears, to his distempered eyes, 750 

Arrived to rob him of his prize, 
The tree of his new Paradise. 
To-morrow would have given him all, 
Repaid his pangs, repaired his fall ; 
To-morrow would have been the first 
Of days no more deplored or curst, 
But bright, and long, and beckoning years, 
Seen dazzling through the mist of tears, 



MAZEPPA 8 1 

Guerdon of many a painful hour ; 

To-morrow would have given him power 760 

To rule — to shine — to smite — to save — 

And must it dawn upon his grave? 

XVIII 

"The sun was sinking — still I lay 

Chained to the chill and stiffening steed ! 
I thought to mingle there our clay ; 

And my dim eyes of death had need, 

No hope arose of being freed. 
I cast my last looks up the sky, 

And there between me and the sun 
I saw the expecting raven fly, 770 

Who scarce would wait till both should die, 

Ere his repast begun ; 
He flew, and perched, then flew once more, 
And each time nearer than before ; 
I saw his wing through twilight flit, 
And once so near me he alit 

I could have smote, but lacked the strength ; 
But the slight motion of my hand, 
And feeble scratching of the sand, 
The exerted throat's faint struggling noise, 780 

Which scarcely could be called a voice, 

Together scared him off at length. 
I know no more — my latest dream 

Is something of a lovely star 

Which fixed my dull eyes from afar, 
And went and came with wandering beam, 
And of the cold — dull — swimming — dense 
Sensation of recurring sense, 
And then subsiding back to death, 



82 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

And then again a little breath, 
A little thrill — a short suspense, 

An icy sickness curdling o'er 
My heart, and sparks that crossed my brain — 
A gasp — a throb — a start of pain, 

A sigh — and nothing more. 

XIX 

" I woke — where was I ? — Do I see 
A human face look down on me ? 
And doth a roof above me close? 
Do these limbs on a couch repose? 
Is this a chamber where I lie? 
And is it mortal yon bright eye, 
That watches me with gentle glance? 

I closed my own again once more, 
As doubtful that my former trance 

Could not as yet be o'er. 
A slender girl, long-haired, and tall, 
Sate watching by the cottage wall : 
The sparkle of her eye I caught, 
Even with my first return of thought ; 
For ever and anon she threw 

A prying, pitying glance on me 

With her black eyes so wild and free : 
I gazed, and gazed, until I knew 

No vision it could be, — 
But that I lived, and was released 
From adding to the vulture's feast : 
And when the Cossack maid beheld 
My heavy eyes at length unsealed, 
She smiled — and I essayed to speak, 

But failed — and she approached, and made 



MAZEPPA 83 

With lip and finger signs that said, 821 

I must not strive as yet to break 
The silence, till my strength should be 
Enough to leave my accents free ; 
And then her hand on mine she laid, 
And smoothed the pillow for my head, 
And stole along on tiptoe tread, 

And gently oped the door, and spake 
In whispers — ne'er was voice so sweet ! 
Even music followed her light feet ; — 830 

But those she called were not awake, 
And she went forth ; but, ere she passed, 
Another look on me she cast, 

Another sign she made, to say, 
That I had nought to fear, that all 
Were near, at my command or call, 

And she would not delay 
Her due return : — while she was gone, 
Methought I felt too much alone. 

XX 

" She came with mother and with sire — 840 

What need of more? — I will not tire 

With long recital of the rest, 

Since I became the Cossack's guest. 

They found me senseless on the plain, 

They bore me to the nearest hut, 
They brought me into life again, — 
Me — one day o'er their realm to reign 

Thus the vain fool who strove to glut 
His rage, refining on my pain, 

Sent me forth to the wilderness, 850 

Bound — naked — bleeding — and alone, 



84 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

To pass the desert to a throne, — 

What mortal his own doom may guess? 

Let none despond, let none despair ! 
To-morrow the Borysthenes 
May see our coursers graze at ease 
Upon his Turkish bank, — and never 
Had I such welcome for a river 

As I shall yield when safely there. 
Comrades, good night ! " — The Hetman threw 860 

His length beneath the oak-tree shade, 

With leafy couch already made — 
A bed nor comfortless nor new 
To him, who took his rest whene'er 
The hour arrived, no matter where : 

His eyes the hastening slumbers steep. — 
And if ye marvel Charles forgot 
To thank his tale, he wondered not, — 

The king had been an hour asleep ! 



STANZAS 

(Written, probably at Venice, in 18 19) 



COULD Love for ever 
Run like a river, 
And Time's endeavour 

Be tried in vain — 
No other pleasure 
With this could measure ; 
And like a treasure 

We 'd hug the chain. 
But since our sighing 



STANZAS 85 

Ends not in dying, 
And, formed for flying, 

Love plumes his wing ; 
Then for this reason 
Let 's love a season ; 
But let that season be only Spring. 

II 
When lovers parted 
Feel broken-hearted, 
And, all hopes thwarted, 

Expect to die ; 
A few years older, 
Ah ! how much colder 
They might behold her 

For whom they sigh ! 
"When linked together, 
In every weather, 
They pluck Love's feather 

From out his wing — 
He '11 stay for ever, 
But sadly shiver 
Without his plumage, when past the Spring. 



STANZAS WRITTEN ON THE ROAD BETWEEN 

FLORENCE AND PISA 

(Written in 1821) 

I 

OH, talk not to me of a name great in story — 
The days of our Youth are the days of our glory ; 
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty 
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty. 



86 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

II 

What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled ? 
'T is but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled : 
Then away with all such from the head that is hoary ! 
What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory ? 

Ill 

Oh Fame ! — if I e'er took delight in thy praises, 
'T was less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, 
Than to see the bright eyes of the dear One discover, 
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her. 

IV 

There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee ; 
Her Glance was the best of the rays that surround thee ; 
When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story, 
I knew it was Love, and I felt it was Glory. 



SELECTIONS FROM DON JUAN 



Don Juan is undoubtedly Byron's masterpiece, on which his claim 
to immortality must largely rest. It was the last and by far the most 
elaborate of his productions, and had attained a length of over fif- 
teen thousand lines when the poet's departure for Greece left it 
forever unfinished. Don Juan is in many ways a marvelous poem, 
but especially so in its perfectly sustained art; while its remarkable 
mingling of satire and sentiment, cynicism and pathos, sublimity and 
absurdity, shows forth Byron himself, with all his complexities and 
contradictions of character. With the possible exception of Butler's 
Hudibras, it is the wittiest of English poems, and as a complete 
picture of its age it is certainly unique. Its verse form, the Italian 
ottiva ri??ia, or eight-line stanza, is handled with an ease and a 
variety of effect unsurpassed in literature. Whatever the subject- 
matter, the style of Don Juan never falls below a high level of excel- 
lence, although the poet's moods change with startling rapidity from 
grave to gay, often leaving the reader in doubt as to what effect was 
intended. But such anticlimaxes form an essential part of the poem. 
Through the perfection of its art, its scathing satire, true pathos, 
and brilliant wit, Don Juan must forever take its place among the 
great sustained poems of the world. 



"'TIS SWEET TO HEAR . . ." 

(From Canto I) 

1 CXXII 

'Tis sweet to hear 
At midnight on the blue and moonlit deep 

The song and oar of Adria's l gondolier, 

By distance mellowed, o'er the waters sweep ; 

'T is sweet to see the evening star appear ; 
'Tis sweet to listen as the night-winds creep 

From leaf to leaf ; 't is sweet to view on high 

The rainbow, based on ocean, span the sky. 

1 Adria : the Adriatic Sea. In this instance Byron perhaps refers to Venice, 
the '• bride of the Adriatic." 

87 



88 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

CXXIII 

'T is sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark 

Bay deep-mouthed welcome as we draw near home ; 

'T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark 
Our coming, and look brighter when we come ; 

T is sweet to be awakened by the lark, 

Or lulled by falling waters ; sweet the hum 

Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds, 

The lisp of children, and their earliest words. 

CXXIV 
Sweet is the vintage, when the showering grapes 

In Bacchanal profusion reel to earth, 
Purple and gushing : sweet are our escapes 

From civic revelry to rural mirth ; 
Sweet to the miser are his glittering heaps ; 

Sweet to the father is his first-born's birth ; 
Sweet is revenge — especially to women — 
Pillage to soldiers, prize-money to seamen. 

THE SHIPWRECK 

(From Canto II) 

This marvelous piece of description, probably the most famous 
of its kind, is a mosaic from various sources, one of which is the 
account, given by the poet's grandfather, John Byron, of the loss of 
"The Wager," in 1741, in the Straits of Magellan. No mere selec- 
tion can do justice to Byron's descriptive and comic art. The story 
of Juan's shipwreck, followed by famine, despair, the death of his 
companions, and his own final rescue, should be read as a whole. 

XXIV 

THE ship, called the most holy " Trinidada," 
Was steering duly for the port Leghorn ; 
For there the Spanish family Moncada 

Were settled long ere Juan's sire was born : 



THE SHIPWRECK 89 

They were relations, and for them he had a 

Letter of introduction, which the morn 
Of his departure had been sent him by 
His Spanish friends for those in Italy. 

XXV 

His suite consisted of three servants and 

A tutor, the licentiate Pedrillo, 
Who several languages did understand, 

But now lay sick and speechless on his pillow, 
And, rocking in his hammock, longed for land, 

His headache being increased by every billow ; 
And the waves oozing through the porthole made 
His berth a little damp, and him afraid. 

XXVI 

'Twas not without some reason, for the wind 

Increased at night, until it blew a gale ; 
And though 'twas not much to a naval mind, 

Some landsmen would have looked a little pale, 
For sailors are, in fact, a different kind ; 

At sunset they began to take in sail, 
For the sky showed it would come on to blow, 
And carry away, perhaps, a mast or so. 

XXVII 

At one o'clock the wind with sudden shift 

Threw the ship right into the trough of the sea, 

Which struck her aft, and made an awkward rift, 
Started the stern-post, also shattered the 

Whole of her stern-frame, and, ere she could lift 
Herself from out her present jeopardy, 

The rudder tore away : 'twas time to sound 

The pumps, and there were four feet water found. 



90 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

XXX 

As day advanced the weather seemed to abate, 
And then the leak they reckoned to reduce, 

And keep the ship afloat, though three feet yet 
Kept two hand and one chain-pump still in use. 

The wind blew fresh again ; as it grew late 

A squall came on, and while some guns broke loose, 

A gust — which all descriptive power transcends — 

Laid with one blast the ship on her beam ends. 

XXXIII 

It may be easily supposed, while this 

Was going on, some people were unquiet, 

That passengers would find it much amiss 

To lose their lives, as well as spoil their diet ; 

That even the able seaman, deeming his 

Days nearly o'er, might be disposed to riot, 

As upon such occasions tars will ask 

For grog, and sometimes drink rum from the cask. 

XXXIV 

There 's nought, no doubt, so much the spirit calms 

As rum and true religion : thus it was, 
Some plundered, some drank spirits, some sung psalms, 

The high wind made the treble, and as bass 
The hoarse, harsh waves kept time ; fright cured the qualms 

Of all the luckless landsmen's sea-sick maws : 
Strange sounds of wailing, blasphemy, devotion, 
Clamored in chorus to the roaring ocean. 

XXXVIII 
But now there came a flash of hope once more ; 

Day broke, and the wind lulled : the masts were gone, 
The leak increased ; shoals round her, but no shore, 



THE SHIPWRECK 91 

The vessel swam, yet still she held her own. 
They tried the pumps again, and though, before 

Their desperate efforts seemed all useless grown, 
A glimpse of sunshine set some hands to bale — 
The stronger pumped, the weaker thrummed a sail. 

XXXIX 

Under the vessel's keel the sail was past, 

And for the moment it had some effect ; 
But with a leak, and not a stick of mast, 

Nor rag of canvas, what could they expect? 
But still 'tis best to struggle to the last, 

'T is never too late to be wholly wrecked : 
And though 't is true that man can only die once, 
'T is not so pleasant in the Gulf of Lyons. 

XL 
There winds and waves had hurled them, and from thence, 

Without their will, they carried them away ; 
For they were forced with steering to dispense, 

And never had as yet a quiet day 
On which they might repose, or even commence 

A jurymast or rudder, or could say 
The ship would swim an hour, which, by good luck, 
Still swam — though not exactly like a duck. 

XLI 

The wind, in fact, perhaps, was rather less, 

But the ship laboured so, they scarce could hope 

To weather out much longer ; the distress 
Was also great with which they had to cope 

For want of water, and their solid mess 
Was scant enough : in vain the telescope 

Was used — nor sail nor shore appeared in sight, 

Nought but the heavy sea, and coming night. 



92 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

XLIII 
Then came the carpenter, at last, with tears 

In his rough eyes, and told the captain, he 
Could do no more : he was a man in years, 

And long had voyaged through many a stormy sea, 
And if he wept at length they were not fears 

That made his eyelids as a woman's be, 
But he, poor fellow, had a wife and children, — 
Two things for dying people quite bewildering. 

XLIV 
The ship was evidently settling now 

Fast by the head ; and, all distinction gone, 
Some went to prayers again, and made a vow 

Of candles to their saints — but there were none 
To pay them with ; and some looked o'er the bow ; 

Some hoisted out the boats ; and there was one 
That begged Pedrillo for an absolution, 
Who told him to be damned — in his confusion. 

XLV 
Some lashed them in their hammocks ; some put on 

Their best clothes, as if going to a fair ; 
Some cursed the day on which they saw the Sun, 

And gnashed their teeth, and, howling, tore their hair ; 
And others went on as they had begun, 

Getting the boats out, being well aware 
That a tight boat will live in a rough sea, 
Unless with breakers close beneath her lee. 

XLVIII 
The other boats, the yawl and pinnace, had 

Been stove in the beginning of the gale ; 
And the long-boat's condition was but bad, 

As there were but two blankets for a sail, 



THE SHIPWRECK 

And one oar for a mast, which a young lad 

Threw in by good luck over the ship's rail ; 
And two boats could not hold, far less be stored, 
To save one half the people then on board. 

XLIX 

'Twas twilight, and the sunless day went down 
Over the waste of waters ; like a veil, 

Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown 
Of one whose hate is masked but to assail. 

Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown, 
And grimly darkled o'er the faces pale, 

And the dim desolate deep : twelve days had Fear 

Been their familiar, and now Death was here. 

LI 

At half-past eight o'clock, booms, hencoops, spars, 
And all things, for a chance, had been cast loose, 

That still could keep afloat the struggling tars, 
For yet they strove, although of no great use : 

There was no light in heaven but a few stars, 
The boats put off o'ercrowded with their crews ; 

She gave a heel, and then a lurch to port, 

And, going down head foremost — sunk, in short. 

LII 
Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell — 

Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave, 
Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell, 

As eager to anticipate their grave ; 
And the sea yawned around her like a hell, 

And down she sucked with her the whirling wave, 
Like one who grapples with his enemy, 
And strives to strangle him before he die. 



93 



94 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

LIII 

And first one universal shriek there rushed, 
Louder than the loud Ocean, like a crash 

Of echoing thunder ; and then all was hushed, 
Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash 

Of billows ; but at intervals there gushed, 
Accompanied by a convulsive splash, 

A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry 

Of some strong swimmer in his agony. 



THE ISLES OF GREECE 

(From Canto III) 

This famous lyric, an interlude in the narrative, is supposed to be 
sung by a wandering poet or minstrel. Its invocation to Greece as 
she was before the Revolution of 182 1 connects itself with the spirited 
stanzas in Childe Harold, Canto II. Such poems rendered the name 
of Byron familiar and dear to the Greeks, long before the poet iden- 
tified himself with the struggle for independence. In English poetry, 
at least, the dead glories of Greece have never found a nobler eulogist 
than Byron. 



T 



I 

HE Isles of Greece, the Isles of Greece ! 
Where burning Sappho l loved and sung, 
Where grew the arts of War and Peace, 

Where Delos 2 rose, and Phoebus sprung ! 
Eternal summer gilds them yet, 
But all, except their Sun, is set. 

1 Sappho : generally considered the world's greatest poetess. She flourished 
toward the close of the seventh century B.C. The scanty remains of her poetry 
that we possess are distinguished by their lyric intensity and power. 

2 Delos : an island in the /Egean Sea, that rose from the waves at the com- 
mand of Poseidon, to be the birthplace of Artemis and of her brother Apollo, 
god of poetry and music (see Gayley's Classic Myths, 1903, p. 63). 



THE ISLES OF GREECE 95 



The Scian 1 and the Teian muse, 2 
The Hero's harp, the Lover's lute, 

Have found the fame your shores refuse : 
Their place of birth alone is mute 

To sounds which echo further west 

Than your Sires' " Islands of the Blest." 3 

3 
The mountains look on Marathon 4 — 

And Marathon looks on the sea ; 
And musing there an hour alone, 

I dreamed that Greece might still be free ; 
For, standing on the Persians' grave, 
I could not deem myself a slave. 



A King sate on the rocky brow 

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis ; 5 

And ships, by thousands, lay below, 
And men in nations ; — all were his ! 

He counted them at break of day — 

And, when the Sun set, where were they? 



1 The Scian muse : Homer. Scio, anciently known as Chios, an island in the 
iEgean Sea, was considered by the ancients as the most probable birthplace of 
Homer, the greatest of epic poets, who played " the hero's harp." 

2 The Teian muse : Anacreon, the Greek lyric poet, who excelled in love songs 
("the lover's lute"), was born about 550 B.C. at Teos, an Ionian Greek town 
in Asia. 

3 " Islands of the Blest " : in Greek mythology, the happy abodes far in the 
west to which those favored by the gods passed without dying. At first purely 
imaginary, these blessed isles were later identified with the Canaries. 

4 Marathon : see note 2, p. 44. 

5 Salamis : one of the most famous naval battles of history, in which the 
Greek fleet under Eurybiades utterly defeated the Persian fleet of Xerxes, the 
" King." It was fought 480 B.C. off the island of Salamis, near Athens. 



96 SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

5 

And where are they? and where art thou, 
My country? On thy voiceless shore 
The heroic lay is tuneless now — 

The heroic bosom beats no more ! 
And must thy Lyre, so long divine, 
Degenerate into hands like mine? 

6 
'T is something, in the dearth of Fame, 

Though linked among a fettered race, 
To feel at least a patriot's shame, 

Even as I sing, suffuse my face ; 
For what is left the poet here? 
For Greeks a blush — for Greece a tear. 

is 
Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

Our virgins dance beneath the shade — 
I see their glorious black eyes shine ; 

But gazing on each glowing maid, 
My own the burning tear-drop laves, 
To think such breasts must suckle slaves. 

16 

Place me on Sunium's * marbled steep, 
Where nothing, save the waves and I, 

May hear our mutual murmurs sweep ; 
There, swan-like, let me sing and die : 

A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine — 

Dash down yon cup of Samian wine ! 

1 Sunium : a promontory forming the southern extremity of Attica, now known 
as Cape Colonna. It was once crowned, at a height of three hundred feet above 
the sea, by a magnificent temple of Pallas Athena. The marble pillars still 
remain ; hence, " Sunium's marbled steep." 



SWEET HOUR OF TWILIGHT 97 

SWEET HOUR OF TWILIGHT 

(From Canto III) 

These tender and exquisite stanzas, in the midst of the cynicism 
and satire of Don Juan , are but another exhibition of Byron's ver- 
satility. 

CII 

A VE MARIA ! blessed be the hour ! 
l\ The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft 
Have felt that moment in its fullest power 

Sink o'er the earth — so beautiful and soft — 
While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, 

Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, 
And not a breath crept through the rosy air, 
And yet the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer. 

CHI 

Ave Maria ! 't is the hour of prayer ! 

Ave Maria ! 't is the hour of Love ! 
Ave Maria ! may our spirits dare 

Look up to thine and to thy Son's above ! 
Ave Maria ! oh that face so fair ! 

Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty Dove — 
What though 't is but a pictured image? — strike — 
That painting is no idol, — 't is too like. 

CV 

Sweet hour of Twilight ! — in the solitude 

Of the pine forest, and the silent shore 
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood, 

Rooted where once the Adrian wave flowed o'er, 



gS SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

To where the last Cesarean fortress * stood, 
Evergreen forest ! which Boccaccio's lore 
And Dryden's lay 2 made haunted ground to me, 
How have I loved the twilight hour and thee ! 

CVII 

Oh, Hesperus ! 3 thou bringest all good things — 
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer, 

To the young bird the parent's brooding wings ; 
The welcome stall to the o'erlaboured steer ; 

Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings, 
Whate'er our household gods protect of dear, 

Are gathered round us by thy look of rest ; 

Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast. 

CVIII 

Soft Hour ! which wakes the wish and melts the heart 
Of those who sail the seas, on the first day 

When they from their sweet friends are torn apart ; 
Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way 

As the far bell of Vesper makes him start, 
Seeming to weep the dying day's decay ; 

Is this a fancy which our reason scorns? 

Ah ! surely Nothing dies but Something mourns ! 

1 The last Caesarean fortress : the palace of Odoacer, king of Italy, who, in 
493 A.D., was defeated and murdered by Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths. 

2 Evergreen forest ; Boccaccio's lore ; Dryden's lay: the famous pine forest 
near Ravenna was a favorite haunt of Byron's. Here Boccaccio, the great Italian 
story-teller, laid the scene of his tale of " the spectre huntsman," which was 
versified by Dryden in his 'Theodore and Honoria. 

3 Hesperus : the evening star. Stanza CVII is in part paraphrased from Sappho. 



MY THIRTY-SIXTH YEAR 99 

ON THIS DAY I COMPLETE MY THIRTY-SIXTH 
YEAR 



This, with the exception of a few unimportant stanzas, liyron's 
last poem, was written three months before his death, in the midst of 
confusion and alarms. With its high resolves and its revelation of a 
devoted and heroic spirit, it must forever rank among the most 
powerful and impressive autobiographic poems in literature. It is at 
the same time both a dirge and a paean. 



9 r I ^ IS time this heart should be unmoved, 

A Since others it hath ceased to move : 
Yet, though I cannot be beloved, 
Still let me love ! 

II 

My days are in the yellow leaf ; 

The flowers and fruits of Love are gone ; 
The worm, the cahker, and the grief 
Are mine alone ! 

Ill 

The fire that on my bosom preys 
Is lone as some Volcanic isle ; 
No torch is kindled at its blaze — 
A funeral pile. 



IV 



The hope, the fear, the zealous care, 

The exalted portion of the pain 
And power of love, I cannot share, 
But wear the chain. 



IOO SELECTIONS FROM BYRON 

V 

But 't is not thus — and 't is not here — 

Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor now, 
Where Glory decks the hero's bier, 
Or binds his brow. 

VI 

The Sword, the Banner, and the Field, 

Glory and Greece, around me see ! 
The Spartan, 1 borne upon his shield, 
Was not more free. 

VII 

Awake ! (not Greece — she is awake !) 

Awake, my spirit! Think through whom 
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, 
And then strike home ! 

VIII < 

Tread those reviving passions down, 
Unworthy manhood ! — unto thee 
Indifferent should the smile or frown 
Of Beauty be. 

IX 

If thou regret'st thy youth, why live ? 

The land of honourable death 
Is here : — up to the Field, and give 
Away thy breath ! 

1 The Spartan, etc.: perhaps refers to the famous charge given by the Spar- 
tan mother to her son when he was about to depart for battle : " Return either 
with your shield or upon it." 



MY THIRTY-SIXTH YEAR 



Seek out — less often sought than found — 

A soldier's grave, for thee the best ; 
Then look around, and choose thy ground, 
And take thy Rest. 

Missolonghi, January 22, 1824. 



ANNOUNCEMENTS 



STANDARD ENGLISH CLASSICS 

List Mailing 

price price 

Addison and Steele's Sir Roger de Coverley Papers. 

From "The Spectator." (Litchfield) . . . $0.30 $0.35 

Blackmore's Lorna Doone. (Trent and Brewster) . .65 .80 

Browning, Elizabeth Barrett : Selections. (Lee) . .30 .35 

Browning: Selections. (Lovett) 30 .35 

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. (Montgomery) . . .25 .30 

Burke's Letter to a Noble Lord. (Smyth) ... .30 .35 

Burke's Speech on American Taxation. (Moffatt) . .25 .30 
Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America. 

(Lamont) 30 .35 

Burns's Representative Poems, with Carlyle's Essay 

on Burns. (Hanson) 30 .35 

Carlyle's Essay on Burns. (Hanson) 25 .30 

Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. (Gibbs) 20 .25 

Cooper's Last of the Mohicans. (Dunbar) ... .50 .60 
De Ouincey's English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc. 

(Turk) 25 .30 

De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars. (Simonds) . .25 .30 

Dickens's Tale of Two Cities. (Linn) 50 .60 

Dryden's Palamon and Arcite. (Eliot) 25 .30 

Franklin's Autobiography. (Montgomery and Trent) .40 .45 

Gaskell's Cranford. (Simonds) 30 .35 

George Eliot's Silas Marner. (Witham) 30 .35 

Goldsmith's Deserted Village. (Pound) 20 .25 

Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. (Montgomery) . .30 .35 

Irving's Life of Goldsmith. (Gaston) 40 .50 

Irving's Sketch Book (Complete). (Litchfield) . . .50 .60 

Lamb, Essays of. (Wauchope) 50 .60 

Lamb's Essays of Elia. (Wauchope) 40 .45 

Macaulay's England in 1685. (Bates) 30 .35 

Macaulay's Essay on Milton. (Smith) 20 .25 



GINN & COMPANY Publishers 



STANDARD ENGLISH CLASSICS 

List Mailing 

price price 

Macaulay's Essay on Addison. (Smith) .... $0.25 $0.30 
Macaulay's Essays on Addison and Milton (in one 

volume). (Smith) 30 .35 

Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. (Daniell) . . .35 .40 
Macaulay's Life of Samuel Johnson, with a Selection 

from his Essay on Johnson. (Hanson) ... .25 .30 
Milton's L' Allegro, II Penseroso,Comus,and Lycidas. 

(Huntington) 25 .30 

Milton's Paradise Lost, Books I and II, and Lycidas. 

(Sprague) 30 .35 

Pope's Rape of the Lock and Other Poems. (Parrott) .30 .35 
Pope's Translation of the Iliad, Books I, VI, XXII, 

and XXIV. (Tappan) 25 .30 

Ruskin's Essays and Letters. (Hufford) 60 .70 

Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. (Hufford) 25 .30 

Scott's Ivanhoe. (Lewis) 50 .65 

Scott's Lady of the Lake. (Ginn) 35 .40 

Scott's Quentin Durward. (Bruere) 50 .60 

Shakespeare's As You Like It. (Hudson) . . . .30 .35 

Shakespeare's Henry V. (Hudson) 30 .35 

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. (Hudson) .... .30 .35 

Shakespeare's Macbeth. (Hudson) 30 .35 

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. (Hudson) . . .30 .35 

Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. (Hudson) 30 .35 

Spenser's Faerie Queene: Selections. (Litchfield) . .40 .45 
Tennyson's Gareth and Lynette, Lancelot and Elaine, 

and the Passing of Arthur. (Boughton) ... .25 .30 

Tennyson's The Princess. (Cook) 30 .35 

Thackeray's History of Henry Esmond, Esq. 

(Moore) 60 .70 

Washington's Farewell Address and Webster's First 

Bunker Hill Oration. (Gaston) 25 .30 



GINN & COMPANY Publishers 



BOOKS ON 

ENGLISH LITERATURE 



to 



Alexander's Introduction to the Poetry of Robert Browning 

Athenaeum Press Series: 26 volumes now ready. 

Baldwin's Inflections and Syntax of Malory's Morted' Arthur 

Bellamy's Twelve English Poets .... 

Browne's Shakspere's Versification . . , 

Corson's Primer of English Verse .... 

Emery's Notes on English Literature . . 

Gamett's Selections in English Prose from Elizabetl 

Victoria 

Gayley's Classic Myths in English Literature 
Gayley and Scott's Literary Criticism . . 
Gummere's Handbook of Poetics .... 
Hudson's Classical English Reader . . . 
Hudson's Essays on English, Studies in Shakespeare, etc 
Hudson's Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare. 2 vols, 
retail, cloth, $4.00; half morocco, $8.00 

Hudson's Text-book of Poetry 

Hudson's Text-book of Prose 

Kent's Shakespeare Note-Book .... 
Lewis' Beginnings of English Literature . . 
Minto's Characteristics of the English Poets 
Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature 
Painter's Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism 
Phelps' Beginnings of the English Romantic Movemen 
Saintsbury's Loci Critici. Passages Illustrative of Crit 

Theory and Practice from Aristotle Downward 

Sherman's Analytics of Literature 

Smith's Synopsis of English and American Literature 
Standard English Classics: 31 volumes now ready. 
Thayer's Best Elizabethan Plays .... 
White's Philosophy of American Literature 
White's Philosophy of English Literature . 
Winchester's Five Short Courses of Reading in Engl 

Literature 



cal 



sh 



List Mailing 
price price 

$1.00 $1.10 



I.40 

•75 



1.50 
.85 

25 

00 1. 10 

00 1. 10 



I2 5 

2 5 

60 
90 

50 
5° 
00 
00 



50 
-5 
So 

-5 
30 
00 

.40 



1.65 
1.65 



25 1.40 

00 1. 10 

00 1. 10 
25 .27 



1.40 

1.40 

.70 

•95 
1.65 
1.65 

•95 
1. 10 

1.65 

1.40 
.90 

1.40 

•35 
1. 10 



•45 



GINN & COMPANY Publishers 



ENGLISH COMPOSITION AND 
RHETORIC 

Text-books and works of refer etice for high schools, 
academies, a?id colleges 



List Mailing 

price price 

Baker's Principles of Argumentation (Revised Edition) $1.25 $1.40 

Bancroft's Method of English Composition ... .50 .55 

Cairns' Forms of Discourse 1.15 1.25 

With an introductory chapter on style. 

Cairns' Introduction to Rhetoric 90 1.00 

Gardiner, Kittredge, and Arnold's The Elements of 

English Composition 1.00 1.10 

(The Mother Tongue, Book III.) 

Genung's Handbook of Rhetorical Analysis . . . 1.12 1.25 

Studies in style and invention, designed to accompany the 
author's Practical Elements of Rhetoric. 

Genung's Outlines of Rhetoric 1.00 1.10 

Genung's Practical Elements of Rhetoric . . . . 1.25 1.40 

Genung's Working Principles of Rhetoric . . . . 1.40 1.55 

Gilmore's Outlines of the Art of Expression . . . .60 .65 

Lockwood's Lessons in English 1.12 1.25 

Lockwood and Emerson's Composition and Rhetoric 1.00 1.15 

Newcomer's Practical Course in English Composition .80 .90 

Scott and Denney's Rhetoric Tablet 15 

No. 1, white paper (ruled). No. 2, tinted paper (ruled). 
Sixty sheets in each. 

Tompkins' Science of Discourse 1.00 1.10 



GINN & COMPANY Publishers 



REFERENCE BOOKS ON POETRY 



Alexander's Introduction to the Poetry of Robert 
Browning. 212 pages , 

Browne's Shakspere's Versification 

Cook's Addison's Criticisms on Paradise Lost 
xxiv + 200 pages 

Cook's Art of Poetry. The Poetical Treatises of 
Horace, Vida, and Boileau, with the transla 
tions of Howes, Pitt, and Soame. 303 pages 

Cook's Cardinal Newman's Essay on Poetry. With 
reference to Aristotle's Poetics. 36 pages . 

Cook's Sidney's Defense of Poesy. 103 pages . 

Cook's Shelley's Defense of Poetry. 86 pages . 

Cook's What is Poetry? By Leigh Hunt. 98 pages 

Corson's Primer of English Verse. 232 pages . 

Gummere's Handbook of Poetics. 250 pages . 

Gummere's Old English Ballads. 380 pages 

Hudson's Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare 
Two volumes. 121110. 1003 pages. Retail: cloth, 
#4.00 ; half morocco, $8.00. 

Hudson's Text-Book of Poetry. Selections from 
Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burns, Bcattie, Gold- 
smith, and Thomson. With Lives and Notes. 
704 pages 

Minto's Characteristics of the English Poets. From 
Chaucer to Shirley 

Schelling's Book of Elizabethan Lyrics. 327 pages 



/ tst 

fri, t 



#1.00 

.25 



1. 00 



1. 12 



I.25 



.50 

■75 



Mailing 

price 



$1.10 



•30 


•35 


.65 


•75 


.50 


.60 


.50 


.60 


1 .00 


1. 10 


1. 00 


1. 10 


.80 


.90 



1.40 

1.65 
.85 



GINN & COMPANY Publishers 



STANDARD SELECTIONS 

A Handbook of Poetry and Prose designed for Classes in 
Reading and Public Speaking 

Arranged and edited by ROBERT I. FULTON, Dean of the School of Oratory 
and Professor of Elocution and Oratory in the Ohio Wesleyan University ; 
THOMAS C. TRUEBLOOD, Professor of Elocution and Oratory in the 
University of Michigan 5 and EDWIN P. TRUEBLOOD, Professor of 
Elocution and Oratory in Earlham College, Richmond, Ind. 



i2mo. Cloth. 510 pages 



THE main purpose of this book is to provide, in addition 
to many standard and familiar selections, new material 
in poetry, and oratory that has never before appeared 
in books of this character. The selections are arranged in 
six different classes, covering a wide range of thought and 
emotion. Each piece of the nearly two hundred chosen will 
stand the test of literary criticism and, in almost every case, 
each has already been proved successful and popular for 
public entertainment. 

A further purpose is to stimulate interest in the works of 
the authors represented. Not only are notable specimens 
of eloquence from the world's great orators presented, but 
there are also included many scenes from popular dramas 
with necessary abridgment and explanation of character, 
plot, and incident. 

" Standard Selections " is especially designed as a text- 
book for classes in elocution, oratory, and English in high 
schools and colleges. Together with " Choice Readings " by 
the same authors, it is intended to form a complete library 
of the sort of literature best suited to public entertainment. 



GINN & COMPANY Publishers 













</> 












V 



% / -*V 



%. ^ 



^ ' o * k * A 






x ^. 



x°<^. 



/ <0 









v* V ^ 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
'; Treatment Date: March 2009 

\ PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 















111 Thomson ParkDr 
Cranberry Township, I 
(724)779-2111 

W <\ - 







I 












. > 













Jj* % 



A 



*+ ^ 






XT ^ ' 







































